Travel: Visit Kangerlussuaq, Greenland

Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, is a small, dusty destination nestled between an ocean and an ice sheet on the western side of the world's largest island. A single paved road, the longest in Greenland at eight miles, runs through the town and down to the port. Another dirt road rumbles east ten miles to the polar ice sheet. If you want to go anywhere else, you walk.

The place is kept alive solely because it is the location of Greenland's main international airport. A single hotel, a small grocery store, and a handful of eating options with limited hours will suffice, but no one comes this far, above the Arctic circle and nearly to the top of the world, for the amenities. The town itself is small and unimposing. The buildings are sparse and ugly. But it is the raw power of nature that is most tangible in this tiny town in this nearly uninhabited part of the world, home to a few hardy souls and whole lot of empty space.

The warmest temperatures of the year still require a coat and hat, and in the summer, the sun will dip behind a ridge around midnight, but it never gets dark. That leaves plenty of daylight for uninterrupted exploration without a soul to bother you. The beauty of this quiet place is that there is no one here. Once you leave the airport and its tiny cluster of civilization, there are no roads, no buildings, no trails, and no sign that any human has ever walked where you are walking, which is quite possibly because no one ever has.

Musk oxen silently graze upwind from you, and caribou glide across your path. Examine the tiny buds on the spongy, knee-high tundra and discover a plant hardy enough to survive despite the unforgiving polar winters. Gaze across the rolling mountains from any vista and you will oversee a land so wild, empty, and pure that the only native sound is the rushing of the wind. That icy breeze that whips across your face and tangles your hair has just rushed off the polar ice sheet, which covers 85 percent of the island.

At the very edge of the ice, a few miles from Kangerlussuaq, it crumbles apart and melts into the sea. Hike to the top of nearby Sugar Loaf Mountain for a view of the looming mass of ice, or wander all the way to the edge of the sheet to watch huge chunks of ice topple into a stream. The ice booms and groans as a warning that pieces the size of small buildings are about to break off, and when they do, the thunderous crashes echo off the hills. This isn't a national park or an official wilderness area, it's just a place where the human touch is light and people are an afterthought.