In the five years I’ve lived now here on the west coast of Norway, my inner relationship to this place has changed and grown. When I came, it was a feeling of complete awe that flooded me, as if this were a fairytale place. The natural beauty proclaims itself here. Dramatic shapes of the land, waterfalls, riotous flora–one does not need to search for beauty here.
And then, with the darkness of the winter and incessant rain, the stresses of the teaching job piling on, I found myself grow so painfully insensitive to that beauty. It became the everyday to me. There’s another waterfall, one I know in any other place would have a dedicated bench, informational marker, a walking path. Here it is just at the edge of a parking lot. And in the second year in this place, I understood the blasé attitude that is taken towards the beauty here at times. I felt sad that it could cease to move me.
Slowly I have come to fall back in love with this beauty in slower ways. It is the kind of relationship with the place perhaps I used to feel in Minnesota, which is still the landscape where I feel most at home, but with all this time here in this different environment, having watched the rounds of wildflowers all the summer, seen the sunlight come and go and hiked up the trails around, I feel the beauty here again these days, albeit without the same ferocity of my first arrival. That has been a blessing in my life.
Last weekend, my husband and I had the opportunity to join the biology class on a three-day expedition to Svanøy, an island north of us, just off the coast and in the mouth of the Førdefjord. Taking a boat from the dock at campus, we stopped several times along the way for oceanographic measurements at different places in the fjord and just at the edge of the open sea.
I loved watching the students take their measurements–salinity, water temperature, turbidity, and then they gathered plankton samples at three different depths. In the fjords, the top meter or so of water is mostly fresh, then saltwater comes below. I was reminded of Barry Lopez’s writing, as he takes part in scientific expeditions. I loved the tangible way the things that we were measuring were right in front of us. It was a feeling different than what we have in the English classroom, working with texts that have been written far away. I loved the idea that measurable facts were present around me that could be directly observed.
The boat’s speed was impressive. At full tilt, when I stood at the prow and leaned forward, the wind held me up. I felt like I was flying.
On the island, we thirty-odd students and eight teachers set up at our home base, a deer farm on the island’s south coast. Then with specimen trays and sturdy boots, we made our way down to the seashore to observe the tide pools while they were exposed.
Getting to see the sea creatures there, it brought me anew to a feeling of wonder. In these five years, I had not until this moment explored in the seaweed, looked closely for such life. For me in Minnesota, nature has always meant either grassland or forest, and I’d missed the incredible beauty of the sea, which is around me here in Norway every day.
I was astounded by the beauty, by the way these creatures lived in this small ecosystem. I was brought back briefly to the awe of my first days in Norway, and I welcomed it. And I was refreshed again by the beauty of this place that’s been my home now for half a decade. I’m eager to discover more.
The school year will soon be drawing to a close. We have one and a half more weeks of class before the end. I’ll write about the summer in its time, but for today, I’m just enjoying this place I’m in, its beauty and mystery. Be well, and happy writing to everyone.
With love,
Jimmy
Words like trees 