Flying in to Kulusuk I had no idea that I was meant to take a helicopter from the tiny airport to Tasiilaq. Kulusuk is no place to hang out. I mean if you choose to hang out you have no place there. And so I floundered. On the docks an Inuit high schooler (with a Yankees cap on) bailed me out. For an hour or so we battled the sheeting rain, waves and whales across undulating seas. I sat next to his grandmother, the boy commandeered the eight foot vessel next to his pregnant girlfriend wearing trashbags as raincoats.

From Tasiilaq I was able to get out on other tiny vessels to see glaciers calving and witness what I thought would be the cumulative effects of global warming and consumerism. The Inuit guide asked me if I was visiting the area because my grandfather was a soldier? I had no idea what he was talking about.

He showed me on the way home. We traveled to see the 10,000 barrels of discarded fuel and other war machinery. Abandoned by American soldiers in 1947, Bluie East Two is the WWII American airfield base along the Sermiligaaq Fjord. A dereliction of duty, the mess remained a pissing contest between the United States, Denmark and Greenland until 2017. Asbestos and lead fill the soil along with what is rumored to be 700 pounds of undetonated dynamite.