Icebergs, Jimi Hendrix, and a Million Shades of Blue

I found this B&W print today while unpacking from my recent move. I was 30 years old, flying out the next day for Greenland and my first overseas adventure-writing assignment for a major magazine. I reported the article and then found myself camped out for three weeks on a beach socked in by pack-ice and icebergs near a tiny coastal seal-hunting village, waiting for a helicopter to come get me. One afternoon, I walked into town to get groceries. I heard loud music coming from a school. I opened the door and went inside. I found three Inuit teenagers, members of a rock band, playing Jimi Hendrix songs. I’d hacked around on the guitar since I was a kid, and so I picked up one of their spare guitars and jammed with them for three hours. For real. A wonderful memory that still lives vividly inside me. I’ll never forget the heli ride back to Nuuk over the Ice Cap and coastal peaks. More shades of blue than seemed possible. Picture taken in 1996 by Eric Swanson in Galisteo, New Mexico, near my then home.

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Brad Wetzler

Brad Wetzler is an author, journalist, editor, book writing instructor, memoir coach and mentor, and yoga instructor. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, GQ, National Geographic, Newsweek, Wired, Men's Journal, Travel + Leisure, George, Best American Travel Writing, and Outside, where he was a senior editor and contributing editor. His book, Real Mosquitoes Don't Eat Meat, was a collection of columns he wrote for Outside.Brad writes, teaches, coaches, and mentors from his home in Austin, Texas. His memoir, Into the Soul of the World, will be published in spring 2023.