Camping on the rim of eternity

I'm sitting in what is called 'Paradise Valley' way up in the mountains north of Nuuk.

Ahead lies the fiord with its floating icebergs and the possibility of seeing the occasional sprout from a humpback whale. You have to look at one spot for seven minutes - the time they are submerged - before you might see it. I have watched and watched, but no luck yet!

Beyond the water lies the flat Akia ('the north land') with its thousands of small islands stretching out towards the Davis Strait.

To the other side rises the vast Sermitsiaq. The morning fog covers most of the mountain and only the jagged top is visible - like a floating island way up in the sky.

The world is still, but not silent. Small sparrows are twittering and the stream next to my campsite is almost roaring.

The stillness is in the air. Not the tiniest breeze comes from this gigantic, endless landscape in front of me.

And there are no signs of any humans. Just a stunning, almost incomprehensible emptiness.   

I sit next to my old charred kettle, where the coffee is brewing, wearing my Indiana Jones hat, which I used to carry on all my mountain treks way back when I was a teenager. The only small detail, that doesn't fit into the wilderness romantics, is this internet-connected iPhone - but Rita wouldn't let me loose alone in the mountains without the possibility for me to send a daily proof of life.

The summer has finally arrived in Greenland It has been an unusually cold spring, but now it is so hot, I can sit in the sun dressed in just shorts and a t-shirt. The last snow is melting. It is the water from the melting drifts of snow that roars in the river a few yards away.

The mountainsides are greening and the mosquitoes have not yet been airborne, but there IS one 'snake' here in Paradise Valley. An abundance of larvae everywhere! So unbelievable many, it could have been the basis for a horror movie if larvae were dangerous!

Especially when you see them from inside the tent:

 In the oblique morning light, the hundreds of larvae on the outer tent throw long shadows, which make them look like swarms of gigantic, crawling monstrosities. 

Yesterday I chatted with the only other person I have met during the last week. A young Greenlander, who was striding up the mountainside.

He told me, he and his girlfriend used to come to this area. Now she lies ill with cancer at the hospital in Nuuk - and every other week he comes up here to pluck a small bouquet of flowers from the mountainside, where they used to camp out.

Tomorrow my supplies will have been spent and bearded and dirty like 'qivitoq', the mountain-walker of Greenlandic lore, I return to civilization.

There will be a hot bath and tomorrow night we meet up with some of Rita's friends for dinner.

Next week, I guess, I return up here.

It feels good to dwell at the rim of eternity.