*Photography by Samuel Zeller, Unsplash
As we sailed seaward thin sullen clouds, hanging low over the water, slunk back into the fjord, driven by the stiffening breeze. Magnificent cliffed walls, draped in their glacial jewellery, gradually dropped away as if weary of their grandeur, relaxing their grip on our senses and making way for a new emotion. Fear.
The gaping jaws of the fjord mouth widened before us. The wind clipped the growing wavetops, casting sprays of white water. Our destination was the settlement of Kangamiut, hunkered down against the north shore of the fjord entrance, braced against the growing force of the Davis Strait by a thin wall of rocky islands. As we approached, wave troughs deepened, the bow plunged down before threatening green walls and was thrust back skyward. Between screeching sweeps of the wipers, sharp rain clattered against the windscreen, blurring the vista of lurching sea. My fingers clenched the hard wheel, muscles tensed, eyes fixed on the dark shapes of curling water. With the houses of Kangamiut just visible from the corner of my eye, I spun the wheel away from the wind, the boat curving across mounds of foamed water, and the bow swung around. The narrow harbour entrance loomed ahead through the windscreen, the horizon pitching left to right, left to right. The wind, now behind us, hurled us down the waves that rushed on ahead, smashing against rock walls at the harbour entrance, throwing up fountains of white spray. In the last moments, the water rolling beneath us, we powered past the crashing foam at the harbour wall and we were in.
The water was suddenly still, boats at anchor bobbing only gently back and forth behind their protective island wall. Tears of relief welled as I felt every muscle relax in unison. Then I watched slack-jawed as a lone fisherman in an open jolle sailed out, ramped up the revs at the entrance, and launched his boat, almost completely airborne, over the breaking waves beyond the harbour mouth into the surging green maelstrom beyond.
Where I had survived, he was going fishing.
