Now if I were really ambitious in my flying plans

I mentioned recently a small-plane caravan flight along the route (more or less) of Lewis & Clark's trip to the Pacific. The same company, AirJourney.com, is sponsoring a more ambitious trip later this year.

Now, I'm not actually going to do this. Reason 1: I don't have an airplane any more. Reason 2: the landing in Narsarsuaq, Greenland for refueling is one I've heard about many times without ever wanting to attempt myself. (Problem: it's a landing you have to make, given the huge expanses of ocean on either side; the runway has ocean on one side and mountains on the others; the weather is often snowy, foggy, gusty; etc.) Reason 3: you have to wear a survival suit on the long over-water stretches, which makes you uncomfortable in the airplane and probably wouldn't save you in the frozen water anyway. Reason 4: expensive. On the other hand... flying at low altitudes over Europe! Approaching Greenland, Iceland, Scotland from the sky! Landing in Paris! Dreaming about it -- especially on Bastille Day: priceless, as they say.

Narsarsuaq on a nice day (from "Most Dangerous Landing Strips in the World" site).

How it looks at ground level, from this site:

Pilot suiting up for the run to Narsarsuaq in his Cessna 172, from this site:

James Fallows is a staff writer at The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter. He and his wife, Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the 2018 book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, which was a national best seller and is the basis of a forthcoming HBO documentary.

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