14th of August, from Bjorndalsbu
It was the sunniest day we’ve had on the trail, but now it’s getting unpleasantly windy. I’m still in the living room of the hut. The hut keeper told me that campers have to leave the hut by 6 pm otherwise pay full lodging. He is incredibly annoying and self-righteous, circling around me like an ever watchful eagle. Or perhaps I’m just mad we’re not free to do as we please.
Mads is sleeping on the sofa next to me, lying on the belly and snoring lightly. I’m sorry we won’t be able to eat our canned fruit tonight together.
“I’ll connect you to the hut from outside. You can camp under the window” Mads said before falling asleep.
“I’ll connect the hut directly into my vein”
“I ain’t payin fo’ shit” he imitated a stubborn camper
15th of August, close to Lyngsdalsytta
I just wish it wasn’t this cold. It is cold in spite of the clear skies, as the wind is blowing angrily, pushing the clouds away into some distant mountains. I’m laying in the tent on my belly, and have cooked, eaten and plan to wash my teeth from this position, like a snail never leaving his house. Perhaps I could continue on the trail like that, snailing up the rocky mountains and down into valleys overflowing with water on all sides. Perhaps then it would be more enjoyable to walk this trail.The last two days we were blessed with pleasant weather. The temperature in the air almost reached 16°, and I was able to stop along the trail, take off my boots, sit on the grass for as long as I wanted, without fear of getting cold. I sat for about 20 minutes when Mads came and sat next to me.
“You know, if we could have this every day until the end, to be able to take off the boots without fucking freezing, I’d be happy” I told him.
These two days were promised to us, long time ago. They were promised to us by every Norwegian who swore on the good weather coming, and how good the weather was in July, just before I came to Norway.
“There wasn’t a single drop of rain for 3 weeks” a lady with her son told us in Sulebu, a hut on an equally foreign planet-like terrain as Sletningsbu. “We have never had such good weather in Norway. We went swimming in the lakes every day”
We waited for this weather and were rewarded for our patience, and for our pains of walking over slippery stones for kilometres while the wind and rain conspired to take us down.
Through the door-window of my tent, a valley lies between 3 separate mountains with a lake between them. On this side of the lake lies the hut to which today’s trail led to, and it overlooks far over to the other side of the lake that has a deep blue colour of a big ocean. Clouds pass over the valley rapidly, like a picture in motion, and doing so they cast their moving shadows on mountain slopes like gigantic lighthouses.
The outerwordly scenes I witness, and the simple reality of being cold and tired clash constantly throughout the day. Actually, the bodily needs aren’t as much of a juxtaposition to the environment, as the thoughts themselves. While walking, my mind goes to great lengths about past, and present, and future, talking and talking, narrating and justifying, judging, realising, understanding, questioning, shouting. And so lost in thoughts, in some inner battles and argumentations, a beautiful view catches me off guard, and it’s beauty is like a slap on my check screaming “wake up”. “Okay, be present now” I tell myself, while on the other side of the valley, a gigantic waterfall blasts down from the rocky peaks and into the sleeping blue lakes like miniature oceans.
“Breathe, in and out”. I command myself. But the mind is a machine, it keeps on rumbling, and so the the legs. They pull me further along the trail, and it is counterintuitive to sit down and relax – there is a distance to be walked, and a destination to be reached.
“You’ll enjoy when you get there” some strict voice assures.- “First walk”.
“But this lake is incredibly tempting to swim in, and the wind is down and the sun is up. There might not be another chance today” another voice calls.
“Huts are always by the water, and you will get there early”. The strict voice reassures.
I reached the Lungsdalshytta around 4 pm, talked a bit with Mads, inquired about the prices for camping at the premises, bought a chips and some kind of a pancake, and devoured both very quickly.
Around 6 I left to find a camping spot further along the trail. While I looked for the right spot next to the shore of the lake, which turned out to be either damp, uneven, rocky or all of it, a convenient entrance to the lake revealed itself, like a secret mini-beach. It laid at the very corner of a stream that flowed into the lake, and withdrawn between rocks, guarded from wind and the colder waters of the stream, it seemed to be a nature-made pool. “Okay, go in, there is no better place to swim. You can easily find a camping spot later, it’s still early”
And in I went, first stumbling over sharp rocks, but soon finding the soaky earth at the bottom.
“Is this quick sand” the mind instantly introduced panic “no one will be able to help me here, there is no one”
“But I can always swim if I start to sink. How can you sink into quick sand if you can swim out of it?”
And then I swam like a duck, just about a few meters from the shore, afraid of the unknown depth of the lake. There was truly no one, except the sheep whose bells could be heard in distance. The water was cold only for a brief moment, and I felt that staying even for half an hour would have been pleasant.
“But you have to set up the tent now. You swam, you will be cold soon, it’s time to go out.”
Now, through the tents door, clouds pass over the valley and the lake. The lake is silent, and it silences a stream cascading into it. Still, the bell of the sheep echoes lightly along the slope of the mountain, intercepted only by an occasional crow making its existence known in the soundsphere.
It is 9 pm on the 15th of August, and the world is peaceful in Skarvheimen, far away from everything. This far away, in this windy summer day, I lie on my belly in the tent, like a snail in his carry-on house, slowly moving on day by day.
19th of August, close to Trondsbu
I set up the tent just behind a rock that protects me from the winds, although it seems for now this might be a very pleasant evening with almost no wind. The tent is about 20 meters from a small pond that lies just next to the trail that I’ll keep following tomorrow. Beyond the pond, in the distance lies the Hardanger jokulen, a glacier pouring over the edges of a tabletop rocky mountain. That’s where I came from, together with Mads, as we made a small (or rather, a 28 km) detour to another hut. It is 8 pm. My phone’s screen is going completely nuts, flashing green lights like it wants to go disco with the aliens. It is almost completely unusable. At the same time, my tablet is at 28% and I cannot afford to use the battery on writing. At this moment I realise how dependent we (overly generalising from myself to everyone, perhaps?) on technology. I have no physical maps, compass, or another way to contact my brother and mother, except through my phone. Screen is broken, and like domino so many things follow – that’s fragility 1.01. When are they going to invent not only robust phones, immune to harm, but the opposite of fragile – antifragile phones, that are not only immune but also profit from harm? Every time it is dropped into mud or a stream, it actually gets better and faster. That wouldn’t profit the companies, of course, but imagine such a world, focused on quality…
But the iphone is still functioning in the background, without any interruption it seems – it just sent a notification with a sound I don’t hear often – the aurora borealis app is sending an alarm – “based on your current location, there are slight chances to see northern lights this night” I barely manage to read between the intervals of flashing green lights.
20th of August, from Sandhaug
Around 4 am last night, I was awakened by my full bladder. “Maybe I can hold it off and fall back to sleep”. After 10 minutes of trying to fall back asleep, I gave up. Just as I had put my head outside and looked up, a shooting star lit up across the sky for 2 seconds. The clearest night sky revealed millions of stars, with constellations accentuated to the point of cartoon-like caricatures. Milky Way stretched wide and over from one side of the horizon, up across to the other. 2 or 3 satellites smoothly covered unimaginable distances, moving silently from one side to the other, operating and doing whatever it is that satellites do.
“A chance of northern lights”, I remembered the notification. Just above the Hardanger Jokulen mountain, a strange dust-like cloud stood frozen in the dark sky. Shooting upwards, a pointed dagger-like part of the cloud was starkly different from the rest of it, almost artificial. “Is that the northern lights?” my eyes wondered, open wide. I stared at it and tried to decipher what it was, waiting for some movement to confirm my hopes. Nothing moved, and the cloud-like phenomenon remained frozen. A bit further east, a red crescent moon loomed over the mountains, and the sky was so clear that both its sun-lit side and the rest of its body in the dark were clearly visible and had their own shapes and shades. It seemed like I saw this unfolding not from Earth but from much closer, from a space station, clearly seeing the spectacular dance of the solar system.
The cold was too uncomfortable, and I had to retreat my head back into the tent like a turtle.
Currently, I’m sitting comfortably in a hut where I took a bed for the night due to the expected -2 degrees Celsius later in the night.
“From tomorrow, only camping. How many nights I have more, 6? Then it’s going to be a comfortable win for the nights spent in tent over cabins, overall, like 16-11.”
I’ve kept a score, determined for the freedom of camping to win over the comfort and warmth of huts. All of the people in the huts are on their devices, resting, connecting with family and friends, checking flights and bus connections, and disconnecting from reality – and so am I. This sudden warmth and human-created atmosphere of the huts was, if overly perfected, incredibly dull and sterile to the incredible, although merciless world outside.
There are 3 more days of walking, and there is a strong sense of holding on to the trail. About a week ago, I had the strongest sense to stop with the fucking walking in the wind and rain and book a flight to somewhere warm. Even today, while walking uphill, a thought came again – “I just want to finish this”
Now I don’t want to let go of this place. What exactly do I not want to let go of? It’s hard to find words for it. Perhaps a sense of unique experience so different from the everyday that it is destined to remain a dream, a story, a longing memory when I’m old. I know I’ll be longing for that night sky of last night, convinced I didn’t appreciate it enough. But perhaps, the appreciation lies exactly in the realisation that what was in front of me was so beautiful that my momentary human understanding was too limited to grasp.
3 days more, 62 kilometres of walking in this remote heaven, and then only a 4-hour bus ride is all that will take to cover almost the same distance walked for 18 days.