Nothing like what I expected

It was a still day, cold and quiet, as I walked alone over rocks and snow. My heavy boots crunched through the crisp crust into the softer snow beneath. I stopped for breath by a small lake, ringed by rocky outcrops and, after my breath slowed, I realized that my breathing was all I could hear. Holding my breath, a brilliant silence rang in my ears. It seemed to resonate in the freezing air. In this quiet hollow, the lake appeared as still, blue, transparent water, but in fact its surface was a glassy plate of ice encasing the water beneath. I sat down on a rock that jutted into the lake and reached out with my geological hammer. I don’t know why I wanted to hit it. To see if it was thick? To see if it would break? To see if it was real? When I did, it was nothing like what I expected.

I have been writing this blog weekly for three and half years of the six that I have so far lived in Greenland. Now I am stopping for a while to pursue another, larger writing project, but I am still here. My blog is still live. You can search and read the 185 posts. If you leave a comment, I will still respond. And I may come back to writing it again in time. But, for now, this is my last post.

Greenland from the Outside In is my view of Greenland, how I was drawn to it, what it has shown me, how it has affected me. Before I moved to Greenland with my family, living here was some combination in my mind of a dream of pure wilderness, of fascination with a remote culture, of the excitement of discovery. It was the ultimate destination for a nomadic family, the ultimate escape. After six years, it is still all those things – and it also isn’t. It is still beautiful and remote. It is still challenging and frustrating. At different times it has brought wonder and weirdness. It has given us places for reflection or filled with ghosts. It has brought anxiety, even despair. And it has also given us new life.

Throughout, Greenland has continued to challenge and change my perspective and my perceptions: the overlap with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle; the closeness of small communities; the struggles with language; the departure of friends; the battles with a beaurocracy that seems designed to be obstructive, but that can sometimes be bypassed in ways impossible in bigger societies. Then there is the effect of the natural world – the blazing sunlight on summer evenings; the wild, winter storms; the silence brought by falling snow; the thousands of icy forms; the soft, pulsating tendrils of green light in the dark sky; the simultaneous loss and joy at the changing of the seasons; the magical secrets of an icy world, shared only briefly, only occasionally, and sometimes with me alone.

I sat there alone on that rock, holding my hammer above the frozen lake, enveloped in silence and anticipation. And when the metal impacted that perfect sheet of ice, the ice did not break. It rang like a bell – a deep, low tone that resonated in the still air.