MISTIFYING

KNUD RASMUSSEN GLACIER, EAST GREENLAND

The glacier is a climate-changer. Today it crystallizes heavy fog from the north Atlantic into shimmering arcs and auras. We camp near the collapsing ice shelf and weather its turbulent moods. Bask in exhaustive astonishment.

Foxes, haloed by fox sparrows, hunt the mist-shrouded shoreline for mussels trapped under beached icebergs. And for fish, washed up on the rocks by the glacier's calamitous calving. Fleetingly, they appear, disappear in caves and crevices. Which animal, we wonder, is more mercurial: the fox or the ice?

And was that arctic explorer ever so charismatic as his namesake?