We hiked along the Ilulissat Ice Fjord Trail on our third day in Greenland. We wanted to go down to a bay but were warned away. I considered this perhaps an overstatement – after all there were no glaciers here and thus no real sense of danger as that captured in this well-known Greenland tsunami video – but we nonetheless heeded the posting and continued along the ridge. A small trail then led down to a secluded cove filled with fantastically delicate forms. We couldn’t resist that. I broke off a piece and tasted the frozen water – cold and clean, a tad salty – and then we climbed a small cliff.

We hadn’t even time to sit when the water suddenly surged – not a tsunami, but a swell of several feet – and crushed everything we had just photographed. (The end of which I caught on video.)It remained silent throughout – except for the swirling water and ice – as the force that could have dragged us out into the cold washed back and forth and slowly abated. We sat and thought about that.