Rebecca’s Reporter’s Notebook #3: Arctic Travel Zen

Hotel in Kulusuk. Photo Credit: Rebecca Hersher

By Rebecca Hersher

It’s something we don’t talk about much: the waiting. International reporting has a (somewhat deserved) reputation for being exciting and scary and full of illuminating anecdotes about far-flung places. And sure, all those things are true.

But the sexy parts are the exception. When I’m traveling for a story, I spend most of my time doing two things: worrying about logistics, and waiting. If I’m being generous, the ratio of wow-that-interview-was-so-enlightening to I-am-sitting-in-an-airport-waiting is 1:5.

I actually don’t mind the waiting. It slows everything down, opens up time for writing without being inundated with phone calls or emails. In fact, I’m sitting-in-a-room-waiting right now, writing this.

In the Arctic, the waiting game is particularly intense. The weather is violently unpredictable, the landscape is stunningly inhospitable, the prices are high and the on-time ratings are non-existent. In a strange way, traveling here in Greenland requires both obsessive planning and cool detachment. My phone is always fully charged, full of contacts and backup accommodations. I wear a heavy coat and boots, ready for an unexpected ride on a snow-mobile taxi (as happened yesterday). I carry a paper map. (Google maps will helpfully inform you of nothing beyond the coordinates of most Greenlandic towns. Kulusuk is at 65.5753° N, 37.1833° W. Thanks, Google. Now I know what latitude I’m stuck at.)

So, having packed and repacked and downloaded and charged, I go to the airport, and I try not to play the Arctic Waiting Game. Will the flight come? Will the connecting flight be canceled? Where, exactly, will I be stranded tonight? These are the questions of the Game, and once you let your mind starting wondering about them, you’re screwed.

The one-room airport or industrial-smelling bunkhouse or severe hotel room will start to feel claustrophobic. The inevitably stunning view of a frozen fjord or snowy mountain range will fail to calm your mind. You will be unable to focus, unable to write or read. This is how you lose the Arctic Waiting Game. I know, because I’ve lost before. A whole afternoon in Tasiilaq, gone. Hours and hours devoured by neuroses and worrying.

But there’s a way to win! It’s called Arctic Travel Zen. It’s a variant of the calm, get-a-sandwich-and-answer-emails approach to handling domestic travel delays. Except there’s no food or internet access.

Arctic Travel Zen begins by assuming that you will not leave wherever it is you are. No, the flight will not come.

Next, go outside. Wherever you are, however bad the wind and snow are, take that heavy coat and go out into the Arctic air. It will probably be stunningly beautiful. If someone had told me I’d get to see some of the places I’ve been stranded, I’d have swooned.

Lastly, talk to people. Part of what making the waiting game so difficult is feeling alone. So talk to people. Here in East Greenland, I don’t speak the language x2, because the first language for local folks is Greenlandic, and the second is Danish. I speak neither. And yet, I had a delightfully broken conversation with my snowmobile-taxi driver about how hard the snow is (“Like concrete”) and his sealskin seat-cover (“Fur is very soft. Seal is very big.”) When I ran into him again, we smiled and said hello, and I felt a little less lonely. —RH

Photo Credit: Rebecca Hersher