Some of you know the part of my family lore that touches on the icy expanse of Greenland.
Back in the late 1950s, my grandfather was a major in the Air Force flying RB-47s out of Kansas. Grandpa had a weakness for perceiving himself the brightest guy in the room and acting as such (a family weakness, clearly), and managed to so impress one of his superiors that he found himself stationed at Thule Air Base, a remote outpost on the Distant Early Warning System, a chain of radar stations created to give the United States radar warning of Soviet ICBMs coming over the North Pole.
Grandpa supervised aircraft maintainers, flew C-47s mounted with skis on their landing gears, and apparently had a grand time up there. So much so, in fact, that he got himself sent back to Thule and its arctic grandeur a second time after telling off a full colonel. Throw me in that icy briar patch, indeed.
This blog has been about sojourners finding their way, our way, and eventually realizing we must find our home. And we've decided, P and I, that our compass pointing toward magnetic north is truly showing the way home, to our new life in Greenland.
This summer a new adventure begins for us, as Peg has accepted a locum tenens position as a nurse anesthesiologist at Doctor's Memorial Hospital in Nuuk, Greenland. The position pays incredibly well, and gives P what she's always valued, the chance to work as a truly independent practitioner. The hospital looks a little rough from the outside, but we're told its state-of-the-art operating rooms provide the very highest standard of care.
As for me, I've gotten adept at working remotely, and Zoom works just as well up there as here. In an effort to become a part of the legal community in Nuuk, I also quietly took and passed the Greenland Bar Exam back in February, putting to use those years I spent in school mastering Danish. They all shook their heads when I took that unusual and solitary path, but hvem griner nu? Huh?
Of course, every legal system has its own traditional attire, and I'll be shedding my seersucker and bow tie for the traditional Greenlander costumes one sees every day in Nuuk Superior Court. Here is a photo of the Nuuk Bar Association, dressed for a day of arguing motions for afstraffelse.
Our arrival in the middle of the summer is no coincidence. Two Southerners who've barely survived an upstate New York winter will need a long slide into those dark, cold months in Greenland.
Plus, getting there before the soil freezes solid will allow us to realize an old dream of ours, and finally install that satsuma grove we've been contemplating for Wyldswood.
Here's a grove just down the hill from our new home, with the picture snapped on a balmy summer day. Our new friend from the Greenland Agricultural Extension has assured us that with the advent of global warming, citrus is thriving up there in all the places that used to be covered in glaciers, where rich, black soil had been buried in ice for thousands of years. Truly virgin farmland for two earnest tillers of the soil, eager to build our brand. Peg even has a slogan we'll plaster on our orange boxes, "Wyldswood North Satsumas. Kissed by the Northern Lights."
Pretty cool, huh?
Of course the ag agent, Tupe Juna, keeps trying to convince us that date palms grow just as well as oranges along the newly tropical Greenland coast, but that just strains the limits of our credulity, even if he does keep sending us photos.
I'm not even sure those are date palms. Do you think maybe Tupe is putting us on?
One downside of our new homeland is that folks up there aren't much into green vegetables, which has Peg worried for my delicate alimentary tract.
At the same time, there are so many new culinary adventures to be had. Just look at the beautiful marbling on those whale blubber steaks!
My hunting options are limited up in Nuuk, so I do not see much opportunity to supplement our diet with venison. I am, however, assured by one of my lawyer buddies up in Nuuk that there is a communal hunting opportunity each winter that involves baseball bats and baby seals. Yummy.
We will miss our friends here in Corning, and the lives we're leaving behind back in Florida, but who gets the chance to go on such an adventure in the late innings of our lives? We can't wait.
So farvel, and Glaedelig Aprilsnar!
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