Walking tour

Steve suggested that I write about our room or the kitchen the four of us share here. He has a good idea, but as I took my evening walk last night, along the river, in the rain, I thought that a walking tour of Kangerlussuaq might really go a long way, for this is such a strange place; difficult for most people to immagine.
First the lay of the land. To the east of us, some 10 miles up a sandy wash boarded jeep track, which tourists pay dearly to ride over in large tundra- tired 4x4s, stands the terminus of the Russle Glacier. One of thousands of outlet glaciers which extend into valleys and rivers and fjords from off of the inland ice cap, the Russle presents itself to us with a wall of calving ice. If you were to start here, at this most dramatic place, you would follow along the old glacial bed now filled by the Watson river. This river, frozen solid a month ago, is now a muddy boil of ice shards and silt. It is running fast, Id guess making at least 15 knots toward the fjord. It snakes through a sandy boulder strewn valley fenced in to the north and south by long intrusions of granitic rock coverde by a thin layer of earth matted by the thick roots of the tundra. You will pass through low areas of moist heath and willow and shrub birch where ponds or lakes lay now empty of ice. The grasses and sedges from last summer stand tawny and stiff, tuffs of matted cotton grass, like so many soggy rabbit tails, mark the edges of these small bodies of still water. You will rise and roll over hills where the tundra will become more dense. Then you will drop again untill finaly you arive at the end of the jeep track at the head of a runway looking directly west out the fjord. Though you will not see the sea, it is there, far away in the shimmering distance.
Turn right and you will walk only a quarter of a mile before you are in the heart of town. There is a post office, a small grocer, a hotel and the airport.
The airport, the largest in Greenland is also the Homeland Rule's largest buisiness. With a population just under 57 000, more than 200 000 people and tons and tons of cargo, move through this municipality of less than 500 citizens every year. The hotel is nothing fancy, though there is a gift shop, which sells ivory carvings, candy bars, post cards and seal skin pocket books. There is a cafe and a 5 star restaurant. The airport is a walk -in off- the street, no security kind of place, though it is dirty and small, (standing room only for an aerbus wait) it is not unusual to rub elbows with other people, mostly Danes, wearing fur jackets, polar bear teeth "aumuelts" or narwhal tusk rings. The counter is just 2 booths long as there is only one choice of carrier. The wood floor is scuffed. Cigarette smoke palls the air. You would check into the hotel from here by turning away from the check in counter and walking 50 feet past the kiosk. When you board the aerbus 330, to return to Europe, (or any of the dash 7 s to fly somewhere else around Greenland) you walk outside and enter the plane from the tail, up a set of portable stairs painted bright yellow.
Across the street which is a pot- holed, puddle -filled, almost two laned road, is the Pillersuisoq, the grocery store. Inside there are 4 aisles no longer than 40 feet long. You can buy sardines, crackers, digestive biscuits, canned beets, UHT milk products, salted licorice, dark rye bricks of bread (our favoite), Danish cheeses, rich butter, weird sandwich meats, seafood spreads (even weirder) , frozen vegatables, whole fishes, whale meat, and plastic children's toys. There is also an assortment of Adidas jogging suits, underwear for him and her, (one brand), sundries and elctronica. Behind the checkout counter, (two registers) you may ask for hard liquor, wine, cigarettes, matches, batteries or fresh baked bread. Remember, all the food, excpet for the fish and whale and baked bread, comes from Denmark, so one must select one's food very carefully by a dicey decyphering game combined of looking at the pictures on the lables and "reading" the ingredients (in Danish). One of our favoite discoveries is, "FRUGTPALAEG", med jordbaer. Ingen konserveringsstoffer. I think this means, " fruit strips, with dates and raisens. All natural fruit preserves". I havent looked it up in the dictionary yet however! These strips of fruit, without anything else added, come packaged like processed cheese slices, with the little pieces of parchement paper between each layer. They are wonderful on the hearty Sweedish WASA crackers along with a smear of Nutella or a hunk of very fine, very aged, Danish cheese. The package is the best part as it is emblazoned by a cartoon monkey hanging from a vine with his finger up his nose.
Above the grocery is the meteorologist's weather station. Facing down the road towards the west, standing in front of the "butikin" (store in Danish) with the airport on your left, you will see some red, one story buildings. This is the complex of Air Greenland's cargo shipping wharehouse and administrative offices. There is aslo a police station, a hostel and some housing. If you were to follow this road for 8 miles, you would come to the harbour. The harbour has no boats in it as it is still frozen. There is only one building here and three landing crafts hauled out on the sand. Once or twice a year a shallow draft freighter visits form Denmark bearing containers of merchandise, construction materials, new cars and trucks and snow machines. Up above from the harbour another few miles, is Kellyville, population 4. Kellyville, deserves its own story later, but is basicly a National Science Foundation mandated Incoherent Scatter Radar sigh. One of only nine in the world.
Let's go back to the end of the jeep track again, with the ice cap at your back and the airport runway in front of you. Take a left. You will now be walking along the fence of the eastern most end of the 9000 foot long runway and the steep sandy bank of the river, where it takes a sharp bend. Before you now lies the part of Kangerlussuaq where most of the people live and sleep and where the children play. This flat, sandy steppe bears the bulk of the hulking old concrete panel buildings and wooden and corrugated metal wharehouses left over by the American and Danish military days. There is a tennis court which probalby has'nt had any "love" since Nixon was president and a modern children's play ground, bright in contrast to the chain link fence and bleached net of the court.
Here on your right built up above the river is a row of buildings that were once barracks. These in order; the RDAF (Royal Danish Air Force) the, Hotel Tuu Tuu, meaning cariobu (pronounced doot doot) the KISS building, the jail, the NY 109Th Air Gaurd's building and The Polar Bear (a convience store/ bar that sells ice cream pops, crackers, cookies and weird sexual gag gifts). There are another three identical buildings (all are about 200 feet long by 50 feet wide and 2 stories tall) which serve as apartment housing for families that work here.
Now you are at the bottom of the street and standing on the bridge which is made of wood, that spans the Watson river. The river pours into the head of the fjord through a narrow gorge of scalloped basalt and empties itslef out into a wide flat plain of reflected cloud, sand bank and water. If you were to keep going from here, you would begin to climb imediately up a steep sandy road either having to turn left, back towards the east, or right out towards the west. Here is the large geological bulwark called Black Hills, ontop of which stands much aviation navigation aids, radars, and radio towers. Ravens are always soaring on the winds up here. It is a fine place to go for views and fresh air or to try and catch a glimpse of musk oxen browsing.
Turn back across the river and walk up the same road you just walked down, heading towards the airport. You will pass a few streets branching off to your right, west down the north bank of the fjord. These streets lead to some homes and more 2 story town- house style company housing projects. They also lead out to wharehouses both abandoned and in use, where the city works, aiport runway equipment, garbage trucks and storage facilites lay . You will pass the recreation center, the bowling alley and a small government building before returning to the tennis courts. Behind the playground, about five hundered feet, stand the two buildings we lease for our cargo/ gear storage. Above all this, on a bank along the south flank of the runway, are the hangers and airport ground crew facilities. Just past the hanger is a small, one story wooden building that has become the Kangerlussuaq museum. Closed for winter hours.
Tired from all of this walking, find the KISS building. Go in the front door, walk down a long carpeted hallway past many closed bright orange doors, up a flight of stairs to room #213. This is our room, a tidy second story 30x20 foot space with a window that looks at somebody else's window on the second story of the hotel tuu tuu. By standing close to the window, which does open, and bending my neck to the east, I can see the river and the hills and the ice cap. This view beckons, but now I must sleep.