Over the Road

Norwegians from Minnesota

2007-07-27T12:10:00.000-04:00

Two Norwegian hunters from Minnesota got a pilot to fly them to Canada to hunt moose. They bagged six. As they started loading the plane for the return trip, the pilot said the plane could take only four moose. The two lads objected strongly.

"Last year we shot six and the pilot let us put them all on board and he had the same plane as yours!"

Reluctantly, the pilot gave in and all six were loaded. However, even on full power, the little plane couldn't handle the load and went down a few moments after takeoff.

Climbing out of the wreck one Norski asked the other, "Any idea where we are?" "Yaaah, I tink we's pretty close to where we crashed last year."

Very Nice

2007-07-27T12:08:00.000-04:00

Have Brain, Must Travel

2007-07-27T12:05:00.000-04:00

These are incredibly exciting times for space exploration. NASA currently operates more than 50 robotic spacecraft that are studying Earth and reaching throughout the solar system, from Mercury to Pluto and beyond. Another 40 unmanned NASA missions are in development, and space agencies in Europe, Russia, Japan, India and China are running or building their own robotic craft. With such an armada at our disposal, delivering a stream of scientific data from so many distant ports, you might think that researchers like me who are involved in robotic space exploration would dismiss astronaut missions as costly and unnecessary. To the contrary: many of us embrace human exploration as a worthy goal in its own right and as a critically important part of space science in the 21st century.

Although astronaut missions are much more expensive and risky than robotic craft, they are absolutely critical to the success of our exploration program. Why? Because space exploration is an adventure--a human adventure--that has historically enjoyed broad public support precisely because of the pride we take from it. President John F. Kennedy committed the U.S. to sending astronauts to the moon to make a statement about the power of democracy and freedom, not to do science. As a by-product, some outstanding lunar science was done, leading ultimately to an understanding of the moon's origin. What is more, the Apollo moon program trained and inspired an entire generation of researchers and engineers, who made the breakthroughs that paved the way for robotic missions, as well as much of the technology that we take for granted today.

Letting the Apollo program end prematurely was a phenomenal mistake. NASA's subsequent strategy for human exploration, focused on space shuttle missions and orbital space stations, turned out to be uninspiring and tragically flawed. The recent successes of the Mars rovers, the Cassini probe to Saturn and other robotic missions may signal a renaissance, but the situation is still precarious. Indeed, the post-Apollo decline in public interest in space exploration reverberates today in the debates over NASA's budget and the general skepticism about the agency's future relevance, especially among the generation now entering the workforce. Further triumphs of the robotic missions will be possible only if public and political interest is rebuilt and sustained by a reinvigorated program of human exploration.

What is more, human brains will be vitally needed in many future missions. Although robots have proved their worth in documenting and measuring the characteristics of distant places, they fall far short of humans when it comes to making judgments, incorporating broader contexts into decision making and learning from their experiences. Some of these capabilities can be programmed, and so-called machine learning has advanced considerably in the past few decades. But the neural complexity that is so often needed to make discoveries--the same combination of logic, experience and gut instinct required to solve a mystery--cannot easily be distilled to a series of "if-then" statements in a computer algorithm. Robotic brains will lag far behind m these kinds of abilities for a longtime to come, perhaps forever, thus placing severe constraints on the science they can do on other planets.

Robotic craft have worked well for the first age of space exploration, when simply flying a probe past .1 planet or landing on an alien terrain was enough to make dramatic discoveries. That era, however, is coming to an end. Now we are entering a new age of space exploration in which we must look more carefully at such planetary landscapes, as well as at what lies underneath them--analyzing the rocks, soils and gases of distant worlds in greater detail to flesh out the history of our solar system. This kind of science absolutely requires human explorers. In this new era, we will need brave people with brains to boldly go where no robot can take us.

By Jim Bell

No-Gain Guide To Vacation Dining

2007-07-27T11:56:00.000-04:00

From all-you-can-eat cruising to fireside camping, how to eat, drink, and still stay slim on your next getaway

IT'S YOUR VACATION-- you've earned the right to indulge. The trick is to not undo all the health gains you've made the rest of the year. Here, simple strategies that let you have your cake, fruity drink, or burger-- without gaining an ounce.

In the Car

Driving all day cuts your average daily calorie burn by 400. Follow these tips to help readjust your intake (from your normal 1,800 calories to 1,400, for example) and bypass the thousands of junk-food-filled rest stops along US highways.

• Drink up

"The recirculated air in a car can make you thirsty, which you might mistake for hunger," says Charles Stuart Platkin, MPH, founder of dietdetective.com. Keep plenty of water on hand.

Seek fresh food

Although a handful of drive-thrus sit right off the highway, a grocery store--with many more good-for-you options-is probably only a few minutes further; there you can get a healthy meal-turkey on whole wheat from the deli, an apple, and fat-free yogurt--for less than 350 calories. Or pick up a copy of Healthy Highways, a guide to more than 1,900 nutritious eateries across the United States. Download updates at healthyhighways.com before you depart to help you plan your meal stops.

Pack healthy snacks

Load a cooler with low-cal, protein-rich foods, such as apple slices and peanut butter--the protein keeps you fuller longer. Our favorite: Rubbermaid 9-Liter Thermo-Electric Travel Cooler and Warmer ($50; Target). For a longer haul, consider renting a car with a built-in cooler, like the Dodge Caliber or Avenger.

At a Campsite

Fresh air, stories around the fire, and dinners under the stars: For most of us, that's the perfect recipe for a weekend in the woods. Here, the right ingredients to make it healthier.

• Trade the dogs, swap the s'mores

Instead of all-beef, get turkey, veggie, or tofu hot dogs--all lower in fat. And to shave many calories off dessert, try this tweaked s'mores recipe: Break up a 100-calorie Hershey's Dark chocolate or a Cadbury Thins Premium Dark chocolate bar and wrap it in foil with one large marshmallow and sliced banana; roast a few minutes over the fire, then grab a spoon.

• Make a fish stop

Swing by a grocery store on the way to the grounds for a piece of trout or salmon. (You don't have to catch it--unless you want to.) Season with olive oil, salt, and pepper and serve with easy-to-prepare dehydrated vegetables (harmony housefoods.com has a great selection). For simple outdoor grilling, get the Coleman Fold 'n' Go Propane InstaStart Stove ($80, fuel sold separately; available at sporting-goods stores). With two separate skillets, you can make the fish in one and veggies in the other.

Fuel up for hikes, snack lightly for strolls

Pack some sustenance if you're heading out for 2-or 3-mile stretches. Easy-to-tote fruit-and-nut bars such as Lärabar (starting at 190 cal, 9 g fat) or Clif Nectar (starting at 150 cal, 5 g fat) provide the energy you need, and you'll burn off the calories. For less strenuous exercise, stick to fruit or a few almonds.

On a Cruise

With pizza served at 3 PM, dinner at 6 PM, and a 24-hour dessert cart, most cruises are one big, endless buffet. "Just because they feed you 18 times a day doesn't mean you have to eat 18 times a day," says Davida F. Kruger, MSN, author of The Diabetes Travel Guide. Try to follow your at-home eating schedule, as well as these tips:

• Rein in the rum runners

Enjoy your favorite fruity concoction with lunch or a glass of wine with dinner, but when you're lounging by the pool, strolling the deck, or playing a midnight game of poker, order an alcohol-free fruit smoothie in a 5-ounce martini glass for about 90 calories or a seltzer spiked with juice and lime for around 30.

Scan the menus

Several cruise lines provide meals low in calories and fat: Cunard's Queen Mary 2 offers gourmet options prepared by Canyon Ranch Spa chefs, including tortilla soup with pico de gallo (85 cal, 5 g fat) and spinach and roasted beet salad (110 cal, 4 g fat). Crystal Cruises has low-carb ice cream, and Silversea Cruises offers Iced Key Lime Cheesecake and Peach Crumb Cobbler at less than 200 calories each.

Always use the salad plate

Be it for the breakfast bar, lunch buffet, or dinner entree, this tried-and-true trick will help keep your portions in control. Use it to eat a salad before each meal, too--another way to cut your total calories.
The Top Places to Stay Fit
We looked at dozens of airports, hotels, and fast-food restaurants to find these healthiest locales.

LEANEST AIRPORT

Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County

All but 2 of this airport's 56 eateries were deemed healthy in a 2006 survey. Top picks for high-fiber, cholesterol-free meals: grilled veggie sandwich at Max & Erma's and sushi and seaweed salad at Musashi. Pack gym clothes for a long layover: $15 buys a day pass to the Westin hotel's gym (terminal A). Find other in-airport workout centers at airportgyms.com.

LOWEST CAL DRIVE-THRU

Chick-fil-A

Avoid the breakfast items (too high in fat), but enjoy a healthy offering of salads and sandwiches, such as the Southwest Chargrilled Salad (240 cal, 8 g fat) and the Chargrilled Chicken Sandwich (270 cal, 3.5 g fat).

FITTEST HOTEL CHAIN

Westin Hotels

You can request an in-room treadmill or stationary bike, plus your pick of Pilates, yoga, and Spinning DVDs. Some US Virgin Island locations offer hula hoop classes set to '50s music, or you can play tennis with a pro on Grand Slam surfaces at the Grand Bahama Island resort. The Chicago Westin even offers freshly laundered workout clothes and sneakers.

DRINK AND STILL DROP POUNDS
Three new, ice-cold, low-cal treats for the road

• JAMBA JUICE PEACH PERFECTION SMOOTHIE A blend of peaches, mangoes, and strawberries, it provides three servings of fruit, as well as 4 g of fiber. (200 cal, 0 g fat)

• STARBUCKS ORANGE CRÉME FRAPPUCCINO LIGHT This combo of cream and zesty orange juice has half the calories of the full-fat version. (110 cal, 0 g fat)

• SEATTLE'S BEST COFFEE COLD BREWED VANILLA LATTE Get a caffeine fix with this mix of iced coffee, vanilla syrup, and milk (ask for fat-free). Prefer soy milk or sugar-free syrup? It's fully customizable. (80 cal, 0 g fat)

By Amy Gorin

Last in Line

2007-07-27T11:54:00.000-04:00

A bus carrying only ugly people crashes into an oncoming truck, and everyone inside dies. As they stand at the Pearly Gates waiting to enter Paradise and meet their maker, God decides to grant each person one wish because of the grief they have experienced.

They're all lined up, and God asks the first one what the wish is.

“I want to be gorgeous,“ she says, and so God snaps His fingers, and it is done.

The second one in line hears this and says, “I want to be gorgeous too.”

Another snap of His fingers and the wish is granted.

This goes on for a while with each one asking to be gorgeous, but when God is halfway down the line, the last guy in the line starts laughing.

When there are only ten people left, this guy is rolling on the floor, laughing his head off.

Finally, God reaches this last guy and asks him what his wish
will be. The guy eventually calms down and says: "Make 'em all ugly again."

NEXT TIME YOU'RE LAST IN LINE, BE HAPPY

Funny Photoshop

2007-07-23T02:31:00.000-04:00

The Mule

2007-06-15T11:30:00.000-04:00

An old farmer had a horrible mother-in-law who nagged him mercilessly. From morning till night (and sometimes later), she was always complaining about something.

The only time he got any relief was when he was out plowing with his old mule. He tried to plow a lot. One day, when he was out plowing, his mother-in-law brought him lunch in the field. He drove the old mule into the shade, sat down on a stump, and began to eat his lunch. Immediately, his wife began haranguing him again. Complain, nag, nag; it just went on and on.

All of a sudden, the old mule lashed out with both hind feet; caught her smack in the back of the head. Killed her dead on the spot. At the funeral several days later, the minister noticed something rather odd. When a woman mourner would approach the old farmer, he would listen for a minute, then nod his head in agreement; but when a man mourner approached him, he would listen for a minute, then shake his head in disagreement.

This was so consistent, the minister decided to ask the old farmer about it.

So after the funeral, the minister spoke to the old farmer, and asked him why he nodded his head and agreed with the women, but always shook his head and disagreed with all the men.

The old farmer said: "Well, the women would come up and say something about how nice she looked, or how pretty her dress was, so I'd nod my head in agreement."

"And what about the men?" the minister asked.

"They wanted to know if the mule was for sale."

The Bookkeeper

2007-05-30T16:44:00.000-04:00

A Mafia godfather finds out that his bookkeeper has stolen ten million bucks from him. The bookkeeper is deaf. (It was one of the reasons he got the job in the first place, as it was assumed that since he couldn't hear what "the boys" were saying, he'd never have to testify in court.) The godfather goes to shake down the bookkeeper about his missing 10 million bucks and brings along his attorney who knows sign language.

The godfather asks the bookkeeper, "Where is the 10 million bucks you embezzled from me?"

The attorney, using sign language, asks the bookkeeper where the 10 million is hidden.

The bookkeeper signs back, "I don't know what you're talking about."

The attorney tells the godfather, "He says he doesn't know what you're talking about."

The godfather pulls out a 9 mm pistol, puts it to the bookkeeper's temple, cocks it, and says, "Ask him again!"

The attorney signs to the underling, "He'll kill you for sure if you don't tell him!"

The bookkeeper signs back, "OK! You win! The money is in a brown briefcase, buried behind the shed in my cousin Enzo's backyard in Queens!"

The godfather turns to the attorney, "Well, what'd he say?"

"He says you don't have the guts to pull that trigger!"

Find Your Center 3 Calming Vacations

2007-05-13T03:52:00.000-04:00

If a retreat sounds relaxing but you don't really want to sit-around in a circle "om"-ing for three days, let one of these active yet meditative trips put you in a Zen zone.

- Be one with your horse Santa Fe Mountain Adventures pairs you with a four-legged friend for two-hour rides through the rolling Pecos Mountains, only 30 minutes away from your digs at La Posada de Santa Fe Resort & Spa. After you hang up your saddle in the afternoon, you can chop, blend, and sauté your worries away in a gourmet-cooking class. From $255 per person per night; santafemountain adventures.com

- Drop a line Get fly-fishing lessons in the pristine lakes and streams at Potosi Hot Springs Resort. Located within the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest near Pony, Montana, the resort also boasts hot spring-fed pools. From $2,200 for two for three nights (includes lessons, equipment, and meals); potosiresort.com

- Be a poser Say you do want to chill on a yoga getaway. Global Journeys runs asana-filled trips to gorgeous spots like Tuscany and Costa Rica. The hatha and Bikram classes, combined with hiking and biking, will relieve your physical and mental kinks. From $2,200 per person for seven days; global journeys.info

By Sara Bodnar

Exploring Greenland, the blankest spot on the map — and not a moment too soon

2007-04-25T17:40:00.000-04:00

DREAMING GREENLAND STARTED MY traveling life. Every day in fourth grade, I'd finish my assignments early, then go stare at the wall map, tracing the path of my imagination. In that Mercator distortion, Greenland loomed over the rest of the world, tumbling down the North Atlantic like the Blob eating the diner right before Steve McQueen saved the day.

Over the years, I've stood on maybe 50 glaciers, spent every minute possible in the Arctic, yet I've never been where everything I could see was frozen.

But here on Greenland's ice cap, the ice rolls like a snapshot of rapids, a moment of turbulence caught in a thousand shades of blue. Slipping backward on an uphill, trying to remember skiing reflexes on the down side of a frozen wave, I move past two abandoned snowmobiles, cross a narrow melt stream, and head into the white.

Thirty-five years I've waited for this. I almost waited too long, because the locus of my childhood dreams is melting. The warming that elsewhere is a slow tick of the clock is a pounding heartbeat here, speeding up day by day.

EVERYBODY IMAGINES GREENLAND, says William T. Vollmann in The Ice-Shirt, his retelling of the Norse sagas. But I had never imagined walking off the airplane in Kangerlussuaq, an old U.S. air base that's now a small town with the island's best runway, behind a girl talking on a cell phone, teetering down the stairs on spike heels and wearing a backless T-shirt, her blue bra a horizon line across her back.

Think of this largest island on Earth as ultima Thule, the place Pliny the Elder named "the most remote of all lands recorded," and which inspired writers and dreamers for centuries. They knew it was there, but not quite where it was or what it might be like. In Thule, said the Greek explorer Pytheas, "there was no longer any proper land nor sea nor air, but a sort of mixture of all three of the consistency of a jellyfish." Even with time and the shrinking world of exploration, it remained romantic and hazy. For Longfellow, ultima Thule was the place where "in thy harbors for a while/we lower our sails; a while we rest."

The white spot on that map I stared at all through fourth grade was big enough to hold any dream.

The white spot of Greenland is, in fact, an ice cap roughly the size of Iran and up to two miles thick. A perimeter ring of mountains separates the ice from the thin strip of coastal land where most of Greenland's 56,000 residents live; glaciers drool toward the ocean like the tongues of tired dogs. Intervillage transport is by boat, sledge, and a fleet of modern planes that are nonetheless frequently grounded by weather.

I'm from southeast Alaska and used to measuring the world by how long it takes to get somewhere in a boat, so I've chosen to sec what I can from the water, sailing eight days up the west coast from Kangerlussuaq to the north edge of Disko Bay, and then back south. Except for a few hours on the first and last day, the entire trip will be above the Arctic Circle.

But from where I stand at Kangerlussuaq's tiny harbor — a skiff returning from a hunting trip with reindeer hooves sticking above the gunwales, the Norwegian Coastal Voyages ship I'm about to board floating slow circles around its anchor in the fjord — I can't see any ice at all. The air is humid and thick, the land perfectly brown. Close up, the tundra is composed of bitter crow berries, white lichen, and saxifrage, punctuated by purple Lapland rosebay. Mountains rise behind a shop with a huge sign that reads "Musk Ox Rent and Sale."

The locked doors mean I'm never going to find out how much it costs to rent a musk ox.

WE SAIL FAST the Arctic Circle sometime in the middle of the night, in full sunshine. The Vikings threw images of their household gods off longboats along this western coast, building settlements, the sagas say, where the small wooden statues drifted ashore. This also used to be the whalers' highway, back when oil lamps held winter at bay in London. Disko Island — Qeqertarsuaq in Greenlandic, the world's largest island's largest island — was the jumping-off point for the search for the Northwest Passage. It is huge and sere, with dark mountains as jagged and oddly shaped as the icebergs jamming the harbor of Ilulissat, Greenland's third-largest town, midway up Disko Bay. The glacier here, Jakobshavn, has retreated at least nine miles since the 1920s; the past two years alone have brought more melt than the previous ten. According to a caption on the best map I could find (although it's full of blank spots, and few of the town names match what places are commonly called, which makes me think cartographers are still imagining ultima Thule), the nearby Sermeq Kujalleq Glacier is moving at a rate of almost four feet an hour, calving enough ice each summer day to supply New York City with freshwater for two years.

Elke Meissner has lived in Ilulissat for three decades. "The fishermen are glad," she says, "because they can fish year-round. But farther north, it's a problem for the hunters and for the polar bears. The sea ice is getting thinner."

Everywhere I look in this blue and white glare are broken bergs, floes, bergy bits, grinders, and growlers. The Arctic explorers had endless names for ice. What else was there to do over winter, when it was too dark to remember the faces of home? But this isn't new ice I'm looking at; it's centuries old, snapped from the glacier face. No sastrugi or hummocky floes, no pancake, brash, drift, or pack ice, not even the marvelously evocative fast ice that in normal conditions forms each winter. In fact, few of these names are needed anymore. "The bay hasn't frozen over in the last 10 or 12 years," Meissner says.

THE CRESCENT-MOON-SHAPED DISKO BAY will be the final destination of Greenland's ice cap, the Northern Hemisphere's biggest chunk of ice. "Greenland slants," points out Ulrich Dornsiepen, a geologist. "This is the low point, and this is where it will all go when it melts."

Around the time of the Civil War, the average global temperature was 56 degrees Fahrenheit. Today it's 57.8. Variations in Earth's temperature are governed by three main factors: the shape of the planet's orbit, the angle at which the planet faces the sun, and the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. The first two factors vary through natural cycles, but since the Industrial Revolution, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and global temperatures have spiked in close correlation. Since the 19th century, the amount of carbon in the air has increased — largely from burning forests and fossil fuels — from 274 parts per million to 380 ppm, which has thickened the atmosphere and trapped more heat. The greenhouse effect in a nutshell.

Recent studies show that the Greenlandic ice cap is melting not only on top but underneath as well, hurrying glaciers to the sea. Last year alone, Greenland lost as much as 52 cubic miles of ice, and the speed of the melt is increasing, in part because so much has already melted. Ice is an extremely efficient reflector, bouncing solar heat back into the atmosphere. The loss of ice exposes more and more rock, which holds more heat, which melts yet more ice. Should the ice cap melt completely, the world's oceans will rise six to seven meters. "You've seen the disaster in New Orleans?" asks Dornsiepen. "The same thing can happen to all big coastal cities."

Before Greenland melts entirely, however, an even bigger problem could arise. All that freshwater means a less-salty — and therefore lighter and warmer — ocean. Changing the temperature and salinity of the North Atlantic could alter the Gulf Stream, which functions as a giant conveyor belt: Cold heavy water from around Greenland sinks and cycles south, pushing water from the tropics north to warm Europe. With each drop of lightweight ice melt pouring off Greenland, that belt frays a little more. The last time it was disrupted, much of Europe was buried under glaciers a mile thick.

AN ICE BRIDGE BROUGHT THE FIRST PEOPLE to Greenland as far back as 2500 B.C., crossing by foot from Canada. There were a couple of false starts before the Thule culture, which appeared around 1100 A.D., got Arctic life right: whale and walrus hunting, snow houses, dogsleds. It lasted until Western contact in the 1500s. That contact — whalers and glorydrunk explorers, mostly — explains why traditional Greenlandic dances now tend to look like variations on the hornpipe and the jig.

At our first stop, in Sisimiut, I corner a schoolteacher. The town of 5,000 has number 8 and 9 buses — and apparently no others — and serious traffic problems around the open-air market, which features seal ribs on a steel table.

"In Alaska, we use the word Eskimo or Inupiat or Yup'ik; in Canada, limit. What's the term here?" I ask.

He looks at me like I'm slightly stupid. "Greenlander," he says.

When the Vikings showed up, they called the natives skraelings, from the Old Norse word for skin. (They made the same mistake generations of wool-clad European explorers would: sneering at the locals' sensible — and warm — fur and skin clothing.) Erik the Red, banished from Iceland in 982, named the place Greenland in a desperate, misleading attempt to get people to come with him, and the Norse gave it a shot for a couple of hundred years. Digging into the shallow topsoil, they grew a few grains and raised thin sheep. By the mid-1100s, the eastern settlement held upwards of 250 farms, even a cathedral. But in the end, the Vikings just never got the hang of the land. They never took up hunting or fishing (what kept the Greenlanders going, then and now) but stuck to farming, an economic model that didn't work because it had very little CO do with the environment. Adaptation was not a Viking virtue.

The vestern settlement was gone by 1300; the eastern settlement was empty a hundred years after that. The last written record was of a marriage. In the end, historians say, ice inexorably pushed the Vikings off the edge of the island. The end of Norse settlement coincides neatly with a peak in the Little Ice Age. Temperatures dropped, and the ice cap spread closer to the sea.

No longer able to farm, their sheep no longer able to fend off the cold, odds are that the Vikings simply packed up and sailed away. Falling out of history, they might have headed for the place they called Vinland, the shores of North America, where, the stories said, the sun was soft, the forests were thick, and grapes grew wild.

IT TAKES ABOUT 30 SECONDS to fall in love with Uummannaq, just northeast of Disko Island, the great mass of Greenland visible across a narrow fjord. A mountain locals say is shaped like a seal's heart shades women pushing babies in prams and teenagers going to church in traditional sealskin pants and kamiks — — boots trimmed with dog skin, high enough to tuck the hands in to keep warm. The houses are blood-red and yellow, pale green and dark blue. When the church bell tolls, every dog in town lets out a wolf howl.

I climb to the top street, sit on the steps of the school. In the water beyond, icebergs trolling the harbor crack and groan. Over on the mainland, bare mountains climb toward the unseen ice cap. The mountains are staying that way later and later into the winter as the snow level throughout Greenland rises. "The snowline should be at 600 meters here," Dornsiepen had told me, "but it's now at 1,000."

The mountain barrier separating the coast from the ice cap in this part of Greenland ranges from 1,800 meters to as little as 400 meters. Already, the lower edges of the vast plain of the ice cap have doubled their melt in just the past few years. What happens when the snowline climbs over the last mountain and the glacier no longer has new infusions of snow, even at high altitude? The glacier dies.

From behind his desk in the Uummannaq museum, curator Karl Peter presides over narwhal tusk walking sticks and polar bear pants. But in the past few years, he says, it's hardly been worth the effort to go hunting. The ice is gone, and the animals are migrating north, looking for a climate they understand.

Peter, who has lived all over Greenland, shakes his head. "It's bad," he says.

DENMARK ENDED UP with Greenland in a shuffle of Napoleonic War paperwork. In 1953, it was upgraded from a Danish colony to an increasingly autonomous province. Even so, about two-thirds of its economy today remains dole from Denmark.

People say that 10 or 20 years ago, Denmark was thoroughly resented. (A show of Greenlandic art in Copenhagen still features a straightjacket sewn from a Danish flag.) But now schools are taught in Greenlandic, Danes are only about 10 percent of the population, and Greenlanders who went away for higher education are coming back and taking over elite jobs.

"Within 15 years, we will be totally independent," says Jens Laursen, a government official in Kangerlussuaq. Home rule began in 1979; now only Justice, Defense, and Foreign Affairs are under Danish control — and Justice is scheduled to be handed over soon.

But the leases Greenland is selling for oil exploration around Disko Bay could change all that. Oil companies claim there could be as much as 10 billion barrels off Greenland's coast (roughly as much as is estimated to be in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge); others estimate a fifth as much. Even so, when I ask Laursen if he thinks the Danes will assert more sovereignty if oil production starts, he just chokes out a laugh and says, "They'll try. Of course."

I imagine huge chunks of melting glacier, icebergs the size of shopping malls, knocking over shiny new oil rigs in a perfect demonstration of greenhouse cause and effect.

ON THE FOURTH DAY, our boat reaches its northernmost point, the tiny village of Ukkusissat (71 degrees, 3 minutes north), a place my map forgot, in full summer sunshine.

The whole village comes out to watch us watch them. Houses perch on bare rocks; tangles of puppies sleep in the sun. A dog that has gotten loose digs at a seal carcass on the beach.

In winter, people used to be able to drive the 60 miles or so between here and Uummannaq across the frozen ocean, but "the past few years, there hasn't been much sea ice," says teacher Maryanne Pedersen, who has coaxed a village elder into full traditional winter clothing. While the rest of us wear T-shirts and swat mosquitoes, the poor lady looks like she's about to keel over from the heat in her dog and seal skins.

When the ship starts moving again, I face backward, wanting to have the north all to myself. No matter how much I imagined it over the years, I never pictured the true stark beauty of this place: the are of humpback whales or the goggle eyes of seals surfacing for no more than a blink.

That evening I go for a walk with my friend Sabine, who writes German-language guidebooks to Greenland, to look at the face of Eqip Sermia Glacier. I ask her how this place ended up in her imagination, what has brought her back again and again. "I need the icebergs," she says, while an arctic fox, its summer brown fur starting to molt into winter white, stares from behind a clump of white flowers. "The ocean, the wide-open horizons. I need the light."

I think about a line from Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, a book that's been practically a bible to me: "In a simple bow from the waist before the nest of the horned lark, you are able to stake your life, again, in what you dream."

Lacking a lark, I bow to the fox.

IN ITILLEQ, just a few yards above the Arctic Circle and our last stop before returning to Kangerlussuaq, no one is moving. Three dozen houses, green and red and blue, fill a saddle between two small hills. A lone pink house sits off by itself, with a view of gulls and rocks and flat water picking up reflections from the bare rock hills beyond.

The town has no roads, but a single path branches at the well-used soccer field, where the ship's crew and passengers will lose a game against the locals, who field up to 20 players and three balls at a time. (Bank shots off rocks and buildings are apparently quite legal.) The path to the left runs past the house where a musk ox head mummifies on a porch rail. The right fork winds to a graveyard of plastic flowers behind a prim white fence. Above, rocks covered with orange lichen are squeezed by arctic blueberries the color of a landscape halfway to night.

Reindeer skins dry by a small pond, just out of reach of the sled dogs. The dogs are white and thick furred, the size of healthy wolves. Greenlandic law allows no pet dogs north of the Arctic Circle, just these massive beasts that eat only twice a week this time of year, a couple of pounds of raw fish scrap. Even bored and hungry, they never stretch their tethers to snap at the puppies that stop wrestling just long enough to offer their necks to me for a scratch.

Fishermen in Greenland carry not only hooks and line but also three guns: something small for birds, a .22 or a .222 for seals ("You can also use that for reindeer, but you have to be a very good shot," a hunter tells me), and a 30.06 for musk oxen.

Weather teaches improvisation and adaptability, skills the industrial age has largely abandoned in a belief that technology can conquer any obstacle. But walk through backcountry Greenland, notice the abandoned snow machines, and you understand why locals stick to dog sledges: Dogs don't break down, can find their way home through a storm, and don't need oil. When the time comes, dogs can even pull the jawbone-shaped sledges across a snowless landscape.

The Vikings never figured out improvisation, and it doomed them. But, as they're already doing, the Grecnlanders will fish when they can't hunt. And then I have to believe they'll farm. And then they'll figure out something else, because weather and need have taught them to be brilliant improvisers, skinning musk oxen under satellite dishes.

UP ON THE ICE CAP, I pull a pebble from a rivulet of melting water and drop it in my pocket as a present for the woman I love.

Five hundred years ago, the glaciers moved down to the coast and pushed the Norse into the sea. Perhaps without so much as a look back at the way glowing blue icebergs ate all but one end of the spectrum, they set sail for Vinland, a place where they imagined life would be sweet and the temperature always perfect.

Now the massive Greenlandic ice cap is melting. Changes here will be felt across the globe, and, as my fingers numb in the melt stream, I can't help but think we face a simple choice. We can decide to change, to prevent the teetering climate from becoming completely unbalanced, get the carbon out of the air, and keep the temperature stable. Or we can keep warming the planet and find out just how adaptable we and other life forms really are.

I stand and look at nothing but ice, a view the Vikings must have known. But they had an escape route; we have nowhere to sail away to. There's no Vinland for us.

The air is humid and thick, the land perfectly brown. The locus of my childhood dreams is melting.

The Thule culture got Arctic life right: whale and walrus hunting, snow houses, dogsleds.

We can decide to change, get the carbon out of the air, and keep the temperature stable. Or we can find out just how adaptable we are.

By Edward Readicker-Henderson