For my mother
October 22, 1915 - December 20, 2003
Thank you.
For Winter Solstice
SONG
And I think over again
my small adventures
when with a shore wind
I drifted out in my kayak
and thought myself in danger.
My fears,
those small ones
that I thought so big,
for all the vital things
I had to get to and to reach.
And yet, there is only one great thing,
the only thing:
to live to see
in huts and on journeys
the great day that dawns,
and the light that fills the world.
-- from the Kitlinguiharmiut (Copper Inuit), NW Territories
Recorded and translated by Knud Rasmussen in
The Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921-1924
