Learning About Ice Pressure Ridges
Where sea-ice meets the shore, or where ice sheets are pushed into each other by their underlying currents, they are forced upwards. Where the ice sheets are forced upwards they shape jagged lines of icy structures across the landscape. When encountering such ice pressure ridges you have to feel your way alongside them to find an appropriate point of crossing.
The figure of the Ice-pressure ridge emerged as part of my own experiences when I was taken out onto the ice by the Inuit research collaborators of the BearWatch project, and other community-members. Although the principles of redirection, and trailing along such ice pressure ridges is therefore based on the material realities of moving across the ice, it is a principle that also applies to other processes and events. Exposure to the Covid-19 pandemic or delays due to the weather are examples of such events that force us to move alongside material agencies outside of our own control. Each of these events perform in ways that push you off track, in similar ways that an ice pressure ridge does.
Like invitations such ridges may constitute a trail of multiple events and encounters. Also like invitations, they often materialize in unanticipated insights and outcomes.
Keep following the ridge, until you can return to the cut you came from.