Thursday, October 07, 2010

11:00 AM

Norway

In a bus, driving to from Bergen Volda, surrounded by Fjords

This—this—is nature unmolested. The fjords cut steep, rocky valleys through the coast of Norway. The spread of the water is, in some places, wide—one, two kilometers across—and in others just a mellow river’s breadth. The flat land available for towns is scant and sparse, and homes are built against the sides of the immense rock faces. Behind some of these houses you can see, as you can see frequently along these fjord walls, waterfalls cascading, thin and meek, to the water below. Everywhere one can see the activity of glaciers millennia past: boulders perched precariously in unlikely positions, fields of stones with centuries of moss built on them.

You don’t have room for a Wal-Mart here. Where would you build it? And how would people get to it? Even in a but we had to cross by ferry and one point, and the roads we’ve been driving now are terrifyingly small—it seems the edge of the bus hangs over the edge as we are forced to pass the occasional eighteen wheeler close enough to joust. Even in the larger towns it seems that the buildings are subservient to the land, and not the other way around.

Sheep graze along the side of the road. When th sun breaks through the clouds over the top of a fjord-mountain it sheds light like a god’s blessing. The more I see of the natural world the more I understand the minds and motives of our ancestors.

You may be wondering why I’m on the road again. Shouldn’t I be in Oslo, or at least Oslofjord? Yeah, but my host never showed up. So I’m headed off to try and rendezvous with some other hosts in Volda.

Oslo was as I expected. Nice. Comfortable. Familiar in its layout and structures, but comfortable. It was rainy and dark all day, but I wandered nonetheless. Right now I can’t even think to speak of Oslo, this rural landscape is so breathtaking.

And so I won’t.