i. Heat
The weatherman has told us that it will be 32 degrees today on our little island in the Oslo fjord. I've used a Los Angeles tactic of shutting the curtains but leaving the windows and doors open so that breeze can blow through. Yesterday the skies darkened to a shade of indigo (I love that word, comes next to violet) and there was massive rumbling of thunder and flashes of lightning on the horizon. Daisy and I drove back from an ice cream expedition on Hvasser and she said, do you think we'll be struck by it? No, I said, of course not. And later that day I read in the New York Times that a Norwegian, an Olympian of a mere 49 years had been struck dead by lightning right outside of his hytte in the mountains.
On the rocky hill behind our summer cottage there are aspens which make the most marvelous and delicate rattling sound in the wind. They shimmer, really. There is rowan too, juniper, honeysuckle clinging onto the granite rock, little ferns, an apple tree that has seeded itself into the side of the face, nestled among the moss. We've propped up an old iron fire place outside. It was the inside the house before we put in a wood burner, and I can't bear to get rid of it. There are oak trees, dogs, an old fashioned grumpy paysan boy lifting his fist, a rooster, some hens all molded into the iron relief. It's leaning against the rock with optimism. We walk past and consider building an outdoor fireplace and imagine ourselves sitting around it on these long, light evenings telling stories or singing perhaps. We’d be wearing shorts and old button down shirts which live in the cupboards and smell of stale pine and sea salt. This dream is a bit silly, I know, because, well, it's going to be 32 degrees today.
No-one can find the vimple, the standard isosceles triangle shaped flag hat goes up every day, so we only put up the big flag on Sundays and birthdays. I love the red and blue and white of the Norwegian flag, and it makes me feel different than I do when I see the American flag or the Union Jack. It feels bold and bright and jolly. You see them on the backs of boats too, flying bravely over the sea. The Norwegian flag makes me think of happy summer days, of Firkløver chocolate, of hanging out in the boat smiling. As my mother said to me yesterday on the phone, "If I think about it I don't think I've spent happier times anywhere but Tjøme."
I've managed to lose the others to a boat trip. Not that I didn't want to go on a boat trip, especially one to Mink Island, where my grandmother saw the mink all those years ago, an island which only has good memories, but I did relish the idea of spending the day alone in this little cottage, sitting out back as I am now, listening to the sound of the aspen (populus tremula, I’ve learned), and the clink of the boats on the jetty, the seagulls, and to do nothing all day. What I love about this island right now is that everyone is doing nothing. Whole families of people doing nothing but pottering about in boats, lying on the grass by the sea in swimsuits, eating a lazy sandwich. I saw a man and his daughter, in a red gingham smocked dress with a white collar, not quite done up properly at the back, half the hem tucked into her knickers, sitting on a chair just outside the supermarket, counting buttons from her little embroidered purse. The father was as fully engaged as the little girl. Another mother with her son walked into the bakery with the golden pretzel sign hanging on a chain outside, as I left, to order boller (cardamom buns). People with little children get up early. It's the best time of the day. Everything is fresh and quiet, sunny but not yet hot, and full of promise. I've brought boller with raisins home and I've sliced one in half and put a bit of brown goats cheese it for my breakfast.
A greek salad with tomatoes and feta and dill and cucumbers has been packed, (I added some garbanzos and pomegranate seed) some chocolate, some apples, the delicious local spelt bread and butter, two bottles of water, in an old ice bag from LL Bean. And they're off in the boat, on the blue, blue sea. My ex-husband was awfully good at building up the supplies in the summer house. Special candle burning hurricane lamps which could double for warming up things. Useful trivets. Spare pairs of boat shoes. Mosquito spray. A barbeque chimney. Smart, efficient plastic boxes for fishing line. All from LL Bean of course. Funny how you appreciate these things so many years later. At the time it just seemed like so much more to pack.
C & I swam early this morning, before the people in the little house opposite our jetty were awake. Our neighbor was already in the sea. "Is it lovely in the water," I asked in Norwegian. "22 degrees" he said, also in Norwegian. Yesterday it was close to 24 degrees. The water was so smooth and calm that little pools of bathwater temperature water had formed, so that you could swim through hot patches that would almost halt your motion, and you'd lie on your back luxuriating in it. This morning it was more choppy. I swam with long, even strokes out towards the old fishing boat that hasn't moved from its place in the bay for years. You can stop and lay flat and stare at the faces in the clouds. The water is the darkest shade of navy blue, not grey or green, but clear, deep blue. It makes you want to put your face in it, to dive into it, to move like a seal. It holds you. You realize you don't have to move at all, that the water has you and it's all going to be fine. This is our favorite thing. Him. Me. The sea. The sky. That's it. All will be well.
I'm glad people are speaking more about recharging their social batteries. Mine is pretty flat. Two or three friends have used that expression and it gives me a sense of relief that other people too feel this way. I am sure it would seem rather dull to my younger self to see me now, sitting on my own listening to the trembling leaves and thinking about when I can jump in the sea. Probably with aging comes the sense that everything you do needs to be nourishing, life-affirming and that there is less time for confection, however sweet it may seem at the time. "Let the water hold you" a friend said, and it's that sense of relief when you realize you don't have to take action all the time, you can just zen the fuck out, and not do a thing and know that you will be okay. That's what it's all about; totally letting go.
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ii. Heart
"And what exactly is that metaphorical thorn for you? It's madness to hate all roses because you got scratched with one thorn, to give up all dreams because one of them didn't come true, to give up all attempts because one of them failed. It's folly to condemn all your friends because one has betrayed you, to no longer believe in love just because someone was unfaithful or didn't love you back, to throw away all your chances to be happy because something went wrong. There will always be another opportunity, another friend, another love, a new strength. For every end, there is always a new beginning..... And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine de St Exupéry
The joke is that I've created my own room here at the end of the tiny lawn we sometimes use for badminton. I have a pale blue hammock tied to two cherry trees, a table and a chair, a glass of water and my notebook. Nothing more is needed. We walked in clover fields this morning, the kind of grass that would cause my mare to do an Irish jig. Lush and bright green from the thunderstorm yesterday afternoon. I woke at five and meditated on the little bench outside our room, looking towards the sunrise, wrapped in a duvet and a pink sweater, remembering why it's important to get up early here on Tjøme to catch the magic. I am barely awake as I stumble out with my phone and take pictures of the sky, shot silk of terracotta, melon, marigold and tangerine, overwhelmed by the beauty. And then I fold my legs under myself on the bench and close my eyes. I am grateful to Bob Roth, who reads this piece from The Little Prince (above) at the end of the meditation. There is always a poem or a quote and it always aligns to exactly where you are (you are exactly where you are supposed to be) and I think of Cynthia Bourgeault, of Buechner, of Ram Dass and his golden meditation. We walk and meet a man with a doodle named Lotta. He, like us, has lived here in the summer for generations. He tells me that when he drives over the bridge onto the island his shoulders drop. He mimes this movement and I know what he means. I think of my grandfather swimming across the strait from Nøtterø to Tjøme with his doctor's bag and a change of clothes in his hands during the war.
There is a necessary compulsion to map the island every year. It's a small island, only 24 square kilometres and still in the sixty years that I've been coming here, we haven't explored the whole thing. Always a new path, sometimes barely wider than a fox path, appears, as if by magic, and how can you not follow it?
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iii. Nuvle
I love the nights when we make plans for the next day at supper. I love waking up with a plan. I love the excitement of an expedition. We decided to take the boat to Nuvle on my brother’s last day. And we’re going early. It’s a small island directly east of our bay and on the way to black rock where the good cod fish hang out, and it’s shaped like a croissant. I haven’t been there for forty years probably, but I have memories of my uncle driving us out in the big wooden boat, shirtless, with his tanned barrel chest, cracking open beers while we jumped off the boat into the sea. It’s known as a swimming island. And people take tents and stay overnight. There are smooth, rounded rocks everywhere providing shelter from the wind, and in the middle of the island is a verdant tropical bit (well not really tropical, but the flora feels unusual for an island in the middle of the Skaggerak.) We climb off the boat onto the warm rocks barefoot, as my grandmother suggested, and wander about, quite silently, my brother, my daughter, her boyfriend, Charlie and I, like a band looking for a tune. We’re children again, somewhat speechless, mumbling perhaps, in the quiet of the morning, with the sun low in the sky and no boats or people about. There is a teenage seagull viewing us. We don’t really know what we’re searching for, but we search nonetheless, awestruck really.
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iv. Mackerel
There's an indelible imprint after a holiday. Your body has returned to ease. There is something incredibly powerful about being in a place where everyone is on holiday and doing very little. Lovely, bright marker-style delineation between everything. Work and play. Eating and sleeping. Reading, swimming, playing cards. Wondering about in Norwegian woods, stepping on pinecones, and picking tiny blueberries and lucky clover shaped sorrel that is sour in your mouth. Standing on top of the little mountain (hill) and looking out over the bay of tiny islands, all connected and yet not, like clouds in a mackerel sky. Everyone isn't just on holiday, they're on holiday without trying to prove anything. No having to be at the tennis club, or the smart restaurant, or the pickle ball tournament, or dressing to impress. There is some urgency. The loan 6am runner for example, or the one or two ski-skaters you see on the road to Hvasser. The people at the place we buy our bread and coffee who don't even have time to swim because it's the summer season. "We'll swim in October" they say, smiling. Every day is packed with what? Most urgently for me is the desire to explore, to map the place, to immerse myself in the magic of it all.
Maybe it was on my birthday, I don't remember, but one morning we got up very early to walk because we realized that by 9 it was almost too hot to go out to exercise unless you were in the sea. It's a familiar feeling. It's what we do in LA; 6am hikes with the dogs before the sun shows its face over the San Gabriels. We found a map app that took us round the back of the houses in Flekkeveien, towards Mågerø and we met a rather nice man with a doodle kind of dog called Lotta. He had thick white hair, cut smartly, and was wearing navy blue shorts and a white shirt. "Don't take the seaside path," he said, "I know it's tempting, but there is some dispute over whether it's allowed." Lotta wagged her tail at us as he spoke. "I've been coming here for a long time" he said, assuming, I think that we were tourists. "Oh my grandfather used to swim across the channel at Vrengen Bru [the bridge that connects us to Nøtterø] with his clothes on his head during the war" I say. I don't know why I say this. I have a need to prove I'm not a tourist. Also I like to brag about my Bestefar, who had a white moustache tinged with orange nicotine, and a captain's hat from the Royal Yacht Club. "They've opened up the land at Mågerø, the forest this side of the King's house," he said. "You can walk there now."
Thus armed, the very next day we drove around the island urgently (for we were on holiday and such things were urgent) to get closer to this new forest. It's just across the bay from us, but longer by foot. If you imagine Grimestad bay as a circle, our house is at 6 and the forest we're talking about is at 11. So the car became the best option. We parked up and somehow found a path that went diagonally across a piece of scrubby ground filled with juniper and blueberries, between two houses, and wiggled up a little hill on a sandy path, between little rocks and gnarly tree roots until it began to drop down towards the sea. Fir trees, raspberries, silver birch and aspen, pine needles underfoot, some birds. Plenty of berries shoved into mouths. And then we found the sea stretched out in front of us, between the trees. The first bay we reached had a small sailing boat anchored in it, but as we followed the path along the sea to our right, there was a small swing comprised of old boat ropes and a thick dowel or piece of broom handle. I can't resist a children’s swing, so I swung on it as C continued walking. We clambered up a smooth rock and through some brambles, leapt over a small, dead but glistening snake to a tall cliff where there was a wartime concrete bunker, rigid and angular amongst the smooth, rounded rocks. He is very chivalrous and holds his hand out for me as we go up and down the rocks, but I learned from my grandmother many many years ago that you’re safer on your own because you know where your balance is, and if in doubt, scoot down on your bottom. Also, you are often safer barefoot.
The third bay shimmered and twinkled at us. It curved in front of us like a scythe, the sand giving way to brown seaweed and shiny pebbles in dark, warm colors, the size of my hand. The sea lapped gently in and out in a steady rhythm until a motorboat went by in the distance and I was aware of how the gentlest ripple can affect everything, gently shifting the sand, moving the pebbles, shunting the little yellow snails up and down the beach. (And thus it is with thought, I ruminated; just thinking about a thing can change it, as suggested in chaos theory. These are the things you think about while lying on your back in the ocean). We had left our swim things in the car and so we swam without. He walked in from the beach and I climbed down some rocks, carefully stepping over barnacles. He’s a walker inner. I’m a plunger. There was no-one within more than half a mile of us. C suggested that we should keep our underwear on for the King out of respect and I imagined all kinds of hidden cameras, but it didn't really bother us. Is there a nation on earth that embraces their nudity like the Norwegians? My grandmother swam naked every single morning, holding the steps (trappen) with one hand and her bottle of Bliw, saltwater soap, in the other. The sea was smooth and darkest blue, the sun reflected on it, so swimming was effortless, and the water held us. Time stopped completely. Nothing needed to be done. Nothing much happened. It was just us and the sea and the little beach and pine forest in the distance. Simple, elemental. We climbed out and lay on the warm rocks to dry out, pointing out animals we were seeing in the clouds. Isn’t it funny how you can see so much when your mind isn’t cluttered with thought?
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