even without wings
Leur temps se construit simplement autour d’eux, avec pour seule repère le gout du moment qu’ils vivent.
It was the summer of ’89 and the glaciers were melting. We drove west from Oslo through acres of desolate permafrost, a thin strip of asphalt ahead of us cutting through the mist. There were no trees, only a grey plateau covered with mosses and lichens, fed by the moisture suspended in the clammy air. It was a ghostly scene, patches of gravel on either side of the road flanked by thin crusts of snow.
Our car had heated seats, a luxury I had never heard of before but unfortunately reserved for the front seats, my brothers and I making do in the back with the standard accommadations. I alternately watched the kilometers click by outside, playing tricks with my eyes and the mass of greyness that swam in front of them, or I occupied myself with a novel or something inside the car.
I don’t remember how it happened, but almost all at once we descended into the lushness of a fjord. Traveling west, toward the coast, meant that we encountered the inland points first, which widened out closer to the ocean. The winter months are long that close to the arctic circle, and even as late as August the snowcaps were melting. Every tapering finger of the valleys and fjords held a waterfall, sometimes cascading hundreds of feet down its slope, ultimately emptying into the lake we drove around. Evergreens surrounded us and the water was crystal clear.
(more to come)