Another September
It is almost that time of year again: when summer becomes autumn, when things change, and I think of that time when I thought the world had changed forever.
I was in a heliport when it happened - the Greenlandic language sputtering from a loudspeaker, my last day in Uummannaq, an island off the west Greenland coast and I was watching an iceberg. At that time I was writing, obsessively, pretty much like now, reams and reams of words, trying to capture the place: the ice lurking at the top of cliffs, the exhilarating chill in the air, and the light - low, odd, difficult to get used to - early morning turning immediately into late evening at noon - making me edgy, anxious that the day was ending, even though sunset was still eight hours away.
![](//photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8022/1412/400/misty%20mountains%20%26%20icebergs.jpg)
As soon as I had landed in Greenland I had started walking, out through the settlement onto the tundra, edging around small bogs and onto the high outcrops of rock. Old rock. Ancient rock - the remains of another land mass even older than Pangaea. I was after something more recent. At Illulisat there is the most productive glacier in the world and I was determined to see it. At last I did - a vast lake of ice with a dirty blocky surface and in front of it the great calved icebergs in a calm sea. Nothing appeared to move. It was magnificently quiet. I looked around and something grabbed at my insides then and told me how foolish I'd been. I was alone on the top of a high plateau of rock and I didnt know quite how Id got there or how much daylight was left. I wanted to go on, Id read there were the remains of a prehistoric settlement further down the fjord but I had brought nothing with me, just the clothes I was standing in, so I turned back and began my descent.
The ice fascinated me. That September I spent so long looking at the shapes that floated imperceptibly by. It was like looking at the coal fires in my grandmothers house. We used to watch them together - coal houses and mansions tumbling down - villages, towns, empires. The ice crumbled more slowly. Each day when I woke I would look into the bay and there would be a different block floating in the sea.
I was watching one of these shapes from the window of the heliport, imagining it to be something different, when I heard it 'WORLD TRADE TOWER' in amongst the as and is of the Greenlandic commentary. Then the only other person that spoke English in the place, a travelling salesman from Denmark, rushed over to me and told me world war three had started.
![](//photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8022/1412/400/icebergs%20and%20mountains.jpg)
Come, he said, and we forced our way to the office behind the counter where the man in charge of the airport was staring at the small screen. New York he said, but I couldnt believe it - too much like a film, too many people screaming, covered in dust. I am not sure when I believed: maybe during a steep ascent from Qarsut in a small plane when the Danish journalist that was sitting next to me clutched the arms of his seat muttering that this was a bad day to fly, or when I saw my Inuit companions staring silently at the TV screen at the airport at Upernavik, or, and I think this was the time - when I curled up into the seat of my third aeroplane that day, 73 degrees north, at last heading south - my husband's voice still in my head after I'd managed to reach him on the phone saying: Just come home.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8022/1412/400/Interesting%20iceberg.jpg)
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8022/1412/400/misty%20mountains%20%26%20icebergs.jpg)
As soon as I had landed in Greenland I had started walking, out through the settlement onto the tundra, edging around small bogs and onto the high outcrops of rock. Old rock. Ancient rock - the remains of another land mass even older than Pangaea. I was after something more recent. At Illulisat there is the most productive glacier in the world and I was determined to see it. At last I did - a vast lake of ice with a dirty blocky surface and in front of it the great calved icebergs in a calm sea. Nothing appeared to move. It was magnificently quiet. I looked around and something grabbed at my insides then and told me how foolish I'd been. I was alone on the top of a high plateau of rock and I didnt know quite how Id got there or how much daylight was left. I wanted to go on, Id read there were the remains of a prehistoric settlement further down the fjord but I had brought nothing with me, just the clothes I was standing in, so I turned back and began my descent.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8022/1412/400/blue%20iceberg%20detail.jpg)
I was watching one of these shapes from the window of the heliport, imagining it to be something different, when I heard it 'WORLD TRADE TOWER' in amongst the as and is of the Greenlandic commentary. Then the only other person that spoke English in the place, a travelling salesman from Denmark, rushed over to me and told me world war three had started.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8022/1412/400/icebergs%20and%20mountains.jpg)
Come, he said, and we forced our way to the office behind the counter where the man in charge of the airport was staring at the small screen. New York he said, but I couldnt believe it - too much like a film, too many people screaming, covered in dust. I am not sure when I believed: maybe during a steep ascent from Qarsut in a small plane when the Danish journalist that was sitting next to me clutched the arms of his seat muttering that this was a bad day to fly, or when I saw my Inuit companions staring silently at the TV screen at the airport at Upernavik, or, and I think this was the time - when I curled up into the seat of my third aeroplane that day, 73 degrees north, at last heading south - my husband's voice still in my head after I'd managed to reach him on the phone saying: Just come home.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are subject to moderation.
<< Home