2nd of August
Why did I come here? What is the purpose of this journey? If it is to clear my mind, or to face something, what is there to face, or to clear? Maybe it would be the best to just shut up, be simple, and enjoy the moment without purpose-seeking. It would be if it were possible, but the mind and feelings do not agree. Why did I come here?
I’m lying in my tent on a clearing next to an old cattle path that goes up into the mountain, and is supposedly 2 millennia old. Lom, a picture-perfect Norwegian town, lies below, and its red painted wooden houses are perfectly and sufficiently distant from one another as for each to have a forest for a garden. In the centre of the town, where only 1 or 2 restaurants stand to accommodate quite a big number of tourists, a powerful stream storms through, cascading further into the river at the edge of the town. The river embraces the thunderous stream and turns its aggression into its own, calm but constant rhythm. The stream and the river create a T shape, following the valley that indented itself between the mountains above Lom. On one side, mountains following the river are incredibly steep, and their slide-like slopes are covered from head to toe with a healthy forest that from distance looks like a moss flourishing on wood.
At the beginning of Walden, or Life in the Woods, Thoreau writes:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
On the other side, directly above the town, an even steeper mountain with a top that rises like a wizard’s hat, and I wonder if there even is a trail going that steep to its peak. My tent is on the opposite side, facing the wizard mountain, and the sun is setting just behind it. The mountain is breaking its reflection into a thousand rays that shine over the valley, now completely peaceful and as serene as only a town in the mountains can be. But the stream powers through, like a nearby highway that never sleeps, or the engine of a plane that keeps on taking off the ground eternally. It does not hinder the valley’s serenity, but only adds a sense of power and dominance over other elements.
Technically, everything is perfect tonight, and I feel satisfaction and pride looking at my equipment and setup through the mosquito net of the tent. And luckily, after 3 times of changing my mind (due to price and the fact of carrying yet another item in the full backpack), going in and out of the only supermarket in the town, I ended up buying the insect repellent, which enabled eating dinner in relative peace, as gigantic tiger mosquitoes buzzed around my skin, never landing – and so I witnessed that these sprays do work.
The stream keeps on crushing the water, and here and there a distant sound of a motorbike, or somebody laughing, or a child screaming is loud enough to fight for its place over the stream. It is 10.45pm, but the sky still has a hint of pink, pink that has gradually disintegrated from the thousand sun rays that have now left the town to the evening’s quiet.