DAY 2: Last night we ate a curious looking steak. After we finished, I was told that it was whale! That explains the fishy taste of it.

This morning we flew to Qaanaaq--a four hour flight (with a stop to refuel) in a 12-seat propeller plane (a Dash 7) that makes the flight once every week. We finally arrived at our destination--the northernmost community on planet. Here in Qaanaaq, 600 Inuits live permanently in near total isolation.

The village of Qaanaaq used to be located 100 miles further south. Then, in 1950, the U.S. government in the height of the Cold War decided to establish a military base near the town, and brought several thousand Americans along with them. There were soon a number of problems integrating with the Inuits, so the Americans moved them north to Qaanaaq's present location.

We talked with a man who was two years old when the village was "relocated" by the U.S. The Americans brought 12,000 workers in to build the base, working alongside a Danish contractor. The base was done in one season. The airstrip idea for the Air Force.

In August of 1953, the villagers were told that they had three days to pack up their homes and lives, and that they'd be moving 100 miles north to the next bay. The villagers spent months in tents while the Danes built small houses for the 50 or so families. Because new Qaanaaq's bay is frozen solid most of the year (it thaws in August), materials for the new houses had to be air-dropped, and the houses weren't done until December. 

Today, the Thule Air Force base at the site of the old Qaanaaq village is a temporary home to about 600, mostly Danish contractors, a few Americans, and about 100 native Greenlanders.

The Danes who control Greenland were compelled to go along with this relocation plan, as the U.S. had just saved them from the Germans in WWII. As a result, the Inuits felt abandoned by the Danes, and distrustful of the Americans, and strengthened their desire to remain an isolated society.

Today, they're supported financially by Denmark, as their livelihood depends entirely on fishing and hunting for seals, polar bears, narwall, musk ox, all of which has gotten harder and harder over the years because of global warming.  We have to realize that when the planet's average temperature goes up by just 1 degree Celcius, the increase in the arctic is amplified, closer to 3 degrees.  As a result, the ocean thaws earlier every summer, and the Inuit's hunting territory shrinks, as their dogsleds can't travel as far over the frozen ocean.  The icea breaks up earlier, and the hunters are vulnerable to more and more accidents. Similarly, the polar bears hunting territory is also shrinking, as they look for juicy seals and therefore, they become fewer.

The height of the hunting fishing season begins in April (after the winter and 24-hour darkness yield, the sun reemerges, and from April on there are 24 hours of light every day) and continues until the sea-ice gets too thin or disappears entirely.  The problem is that this happens earlier now. 

We arrived to beautiful weather, a chrystal clear sky with a temperature barely below 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-19 C). It is spring in Qaanaaq. 

The menu tonight is seal stew, which I have to admit is not my favorite. 

[Editor's note: Over the course of two weeks, Larry Lunt, a member of NRDC's Global Leadership Council, and Alain Hubert, a Belgian explorer and founder of the International Polar Foundation, will trek some 200 miles from the town of Qaanaaq across Greenland's Humbolt Glacier, the Northern Hemisphere's largest and fastest moving river of ice. Along the way, as special contributors to OnEarth's Greenlight blog, Lunt and Hubert will post dispatches from the ice: stories of a culture and wilderness in flux and lessons for what our own future may hold.  Follow the journey at our Destination: Greenland page.]