The portal to Greenland.

Imagine you're looking at a globe.

You know, of, like, Earth.

As the globe slowly spins on its axel of north and south poles, parts of the globe get dark while other parts get light again.

This is of course a fairly obvious indicator of where the sun is shining, and where it is not.

You know, daytime, nighttime, light, shadow, etc etc.

Travel is shadow work (or at least, it has the possibility to be).

What the means is that areas of our psyche that might normally not be bathed in daylight (or consciousness), become so, inherently by us traveling to them, and accepting this new reality and way of living as TRUE (not the case if we travel to a place, do not immerse ourselves in this new culture, or otherwise are in denial of their way of life).

My normal experience of travel is that each new place I discover expands the areas of lightness gradually. As though the area of lightness subtly grows larger while the area of darkness gets smaller - threading into my psyche the new consciousness as a partnership to existing elements that are already in the light; that I'm already aware of. There is at some point some level of relation to existing consciousness that makes this expansion fairly easy to navigate and understand (more or less, anyway).

I experienced an entirely new thing in Greenland.

Greenland is unlike anything I have ever seen before in my life. There is no way to compare it to any other place and thus it's difficult to partner it within my existing realm of consciousness.

It's colder than I could've ever imagined there. Snot freezes inside your nostrils within 30 seconds of going outside, and eyelashes collect icicles that make it difficult to blink.

There are glaciers the size of skyscrapers floating nonchalantly at the end of almost every street.

The landscape changes depending on the wind, as ice moves in and out of bays, and the area gets covered with snow (or the snow gets blown away entirely).

There are adorable puppies roaming the street, eager to let you pet them and massage their bellies.

Commuting via dogsled to go fishing in frozen fjords on a daily basis is a pretty standard way of life.

Greenlandic people have never diverged from inherent and primal human connection. Nature is so obvious there that they know to not fight it, and they also know that they need each other. Connecting with a local Greenlandic person feels like diving into and being wrapped up in their soul. Every single time.

I had to assert to myself multiple times throughout our journey that this was, in fact, real life. Each new day, letting in this new reality while having no basis for comparison from anywhere else I've been in the world.

It was almost surreal.

Much in the way Greenland is an island in the arctic, the consciousness and conversion of shadow to light that took place now exists as an island surrounded by shadow in my psyche.

So imagine you're looking at a globe again. And it's dark over the east coast and Europe.

And that Greenland is bright and lit up despite there being darkness all around it, as though a portal of sunshine shone through from the other side of the planet.

A new dimension is taking shape.

I suspect I'll be digesting this experience for years to come, but succinctly, this is how it feels.