I remember, about fifteen years ago, when map-based GPS units were introduced to the Air Greenland helicopter fleet. It was the end of a field season in west Greenland and I was camped near the inland ice, a good forty-five minute flight from Nuuk. Ours was the last field camp to be flown back from our mapping project. Once we returned to town, we’d all be packing up and going home. It was also the last flight of the season for our Greenlandic pilot. He loved flying out in the wilderness, away from town, away from everyone, most of the time alone.
Once we’d packed all our field gear into every last space in the helicopter, rock samples squeezed into every spare corner and under the seats, we reluctantly also squeezed ourselves into the helicopter to go home. I watched the pilot as he jabbed his fingers unsurely at the GPS buttons. The display flicked between different modes of information. He was looking for the map screen. Then a green outline of the entirety of Greenland blinked onto the small screen, partially concealed by a big star that sat over our position. At the scale of the map, the star covered an area of ten thousand square kilometres or more.
“That’s where we are,” he said with no trace of a smile, and he leaned back in his seat.
He’d given up on trying to figure out how to zoom in on our location and route. He knew the way back to Nuuk in any case. Then the deep blast of the jet engines fired and the rotors started to wind up toward a deafening roar.
As we rose over the milky blue fjord, he turned and asked, slightly sheepishly, if he could fly close to the ground.
“Of course,” I replied, and he smiled to himself, turning back to the route and descending.
For the remainder of the long journey, which seemed to pass in moments, the helicopter hugged the terrane only metres into the air, rising over cliffed walls, dropping steeply into broad valleys, sweeping along secluded, silent shores. So close to the ground, we were, all of us – the pilot, my colleague in the back seat, me – completely isolated in our thoughts, engrossed in the thrilling terrane rushing by, as if it were made for each of us alone.
