The wind in Kangerlussuaq has ripped the snow off an unforgiving sheet of ice. I pry my eyelids open. I walk down Meyers Avenue and round our barracks like I’m on patrol. It beats not sleeping in a chair in a dark room. I check on the shack out back. The plywood is peeling, but the satellite dish next door looks intact. There’s a bit of a cliff here that drops down to the alluvial flatlands, the silt quicksand, and the Søndre Strømfjord. Across a bridge is the Black Ridge and the Sugarloaf. I walk a distance up the road until I can get a good look down. I am half asleep. I listen. There’s little more than the wind and a couple young Yukoners, far below, being screamed-at to get off the frozen silt. The shouts sound like a bird.

—Thanks to Team Alaska, the Arctic Winter Games, and the people of Nuuk and Kangerlussuaq (2016).