First questions were born How big is the world? That’s what I want to know what I came for — to travel where the world meets itself beyond fiction where what is said to be so is so. The truth of bleached bones wind-seared skeletons — I came for rock that dependable middleman between sky and ocean binding worlds. Each world holding to its own place. I go here because the land so sparsely peopled is hard to plunder. ************************************************************************* And me not noticing how rain can loosen a floater’s grip on rock ’til twenty feet from my bow shore ice plummets The ocean gulps a season reminding me what brute force is in it and I feel winter’s revenge on summer in the waves’ attack Back up, orders Scott don’t want that ice coming up under us ************************************************************************* We’ve returned to a different camp on Skraeling islanded until wind dictates the which-way of ice. About a mile — or maybe ten — light letters the lustrous pearls of the multi-year white menace strung across the mouth of the fjord. If I was a bird reconnoitering I’d see how tide, spurring swell, could set sea-ice packed with wind at its back: trap us in mid-channel — our paddles, pitiful staves against the sea-gang’s swarm. ************************************************************************** Meals under tarp, rain pissing on-off. I’m ornery, mean-minded. Yet — there’s power in the glare light in just sitting waiting it out when you can’t run turn it off or on nothing to do alone together — better than kicking ass.