Fifth Journey Day 16: Carried Without Drawing
Date: May 24, 2025
Location: Qaqortoq, Greenland
There’s a kind of hush here that isn’t silence — more like the absence of insistence. I arrived in Qaqortoq late morning, a gentle descent over subdued blue fjords and sharp pockets of ice still clinging to shaded crags. The houses appeared like brushstrokes across the hillside — spare, bright, and purposeful.
After settling into a quiet guesthouse that overlooks the water, I walked the stone carving trail. It winds just above the town, along a rocky path where sculptures are carved directly into the boulders and cliff faces. The carvings are not arranged or labeled — they simply exist, waiting to be noticed. Some looked ancient, though most are contemporary, etched by Greenlandic artists as part of a community project. I ran my fingertips across a stone whale emerging from the rock. It felt both raw and deliberate — something about it reminded me of my own way of working.
The fog shifted slightly as I moved, revealing and concealing views of the town below. I paused often, not to rest, but to listen — to the drip of melting ice, to gulls calling across the bay, to my own thoughts stretching quietly into the cold air.
I didn’t sketch today. Not because I lacked the will, but because the forms were already so complete — so embedded in the stone, in the place. I wanted to carry the sensation a little longer before translating it into pigment.
What lingers most now is the sense that the land here doesn’t try to impress or overwhelm. It just is — solid, shaped, slightly damp to the touch. And within that, the quiet certainty of people carving their own marks not as declarations, but as conversations. I think I needed that reminder.
