FROM CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC TRAVEL
THE SETTING SUN pours its amber honey down onto a steep trail carved through meadows of emerald grass. I hike up the hillside, reaching a breathless, abrupt stop on a narrow ridge. A view of the tiny, turf-roofed village on Mykines—one of the most remote members of Denmark’s Faroe Islands—is sketched in shadow in the valley below. On the other side of the vertiginous cliff, there’s nothing but the wild, churning North Atlantic, and on the ridge’s edge, puffins strut and hop—hundreds of them. Their feathers ruffle in the briny wind as they huddle together, bobbing their bright orange beaks and blinking teardrop-shaped eyes. Spotting so many of them together, cast against the yawning ocean, feels like happening upon a congress of mythical creatures.
Heightening the
