The season at the Eqi Glacier ends in mid September, when the frost comes back. We arrived just after. The lodge was closed, the tourists were gone, and the boat that dropped us off would not be able to return for days. A storm was coming. Markus wanted the sunrise and the sunset, which meant sleeping out there, and sleeping out there was not a small decision: the ride is six or seven hours, and nobody runs a boat through that water in the dark because you hit an iceberg. So once the boat left, it left. We were four on the team. The other two said no, too extreme, and I do not blame them. The two of us stood on the shore with our gear and watched the boat disappear between the icebergs.

Greenland was one of the climate tipping points we traveled to for our climate film, the one that still lives under my desk. In Greenland that change has a face: the melting ice sheet. The Eqi Glacier, about 70 kilometers north of Ilulissat, is one of the most active calving glaciers in the northern hemisphere. In summer it calves roughly every ten minutes. You hear it before you see it, a crack like artillery rolling over the water.

That first evening was calm and beautiful. We pitched our tents on an exposed spot with a view over the glacier lake and the valley. That view was the mistake.