Dear Polar Bears, Polar Bearettes, and cubs of all colors and creeds:
Fab and I spent ten wonderful days in Greenland earlier this month, and I will share as many photos as Substack will allow in one email. Some of those you’ll find below, but there are a bunch more embedded in the video seen above, along with my short commentary about the relationship between Earth’s largest island and her suitors: Denmark and the United States. You’ll want to enjoy it all!
In short, Greenland is breathtakingly beautiful, stark, clean, and immense — approximately one-third the size of the entire United States. Nature dominates. The human intrusion on this vast land is minimal. There are only about 50,000 people there, and some of them leave during the county’s long, dark winter months.
80% of Greenland is covered in ice up to three kilometers (almost two miles) thick. That part of the country is almost completely uninhabited, even by the native Inuit people, who prefer to live along the rocky coasts where the fishing is good.
Greenland’s massive ice field is melting due to a general global warming scientists say started about 11,700 years ago (at the beginning of the Holocene period), but which they believe has accelerated in the last 100 years due to human influence. They know this by drilling deep into the Arctic ice, which serves as a time machine, and studying air bubbles trapped within the ice.
One remarkable finding is that eons ago the Earth warmed by 14°C (57°F) in fewer than 50 years. Wow! What a heat wave that must have been! I hope the cavepeople had AC!
Fabi and I try to do our part protecting Mother Earth by not owning a car, borrowing or renting one as little as possible, drying all of our wash on the line (an electric dryer is a humongous energy hog), living in a small, one bedroom apartment, rarely using AC, walking (a lot), grocery shopping by bicycle, and keeping our material consumption to a minimum. Our guilty pleasure is air travel, and honestly, it’s not easy getting to Greenland without an airplane. It’s a long trip by kayak!
It’s impossible to convey the beauty of Greenland with just a basic iPhone camera, but we did our best. Most of the time, I found myself speechless, trying to absorb the grandeur into my soul and bones. Some things just have to be seen with your bare eyes.
If you are so inclined, I urge you to visit Greenland. It’s expensive, and one must be physically fit to enjoy it fully, but it’s well worth the effort. The fellow travelers you’ll meet there are the adventurous type, so you’ll be in good company.
Don’t forget — there are more photos found in the video embedded in this email. Be sure to take a look.
I’ll be back next week with a life lesson I learned while in Greenland from being married to a strong woman! Stay tuned, and I’ll see you on the road.
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