Girl in Ice

by Erica Ferencik

sokaparayana, which means “wholly given up to sorrow.”

dolor repentino, a fit of sudden pain.

I reminded myself of the reason Greenland was called Greenland. One theory held that when the Vikings discovered Iceland, they fell so in love with it they wanted to keep it a secret, so they gave Greenland its attractive name, hoping to lure explorers away from Iceland and to this nearly seven-hundred-thousand-square-mile block of ice—two miles deep at its center—ringed by black, craggy mountains that shot straight up out of the sea.

“Because even if we got rid of fossil fuels tomorrow, which we won’t, fix everything that’s broken, which we can’t, the problem is, no one can fix human nature. We’re greedy, selfish, stupid, so, so fucking stupid, and shortsighted by nature. And that’s what’s going to kill us all.

Contempt, fear, sadness, disgust, anger; contempt,

I just don’t think the world is a place that can be saved.

I lost my way when I tried to explain the word hope. But she told me about a word in her language for a particular kind of hope: the feeling a hunter has when he’s waited all day at a breathing hole for a seal and one comes up but he misses with his harpoon, and even though the sun is going down and he’s hungry and cold, he knows he’ll try again tomorrow, and tomorrow he’ll be successful. He has no doubt. I love that word.