S2E11 Beyond The North Wind Chapter 11

Anna leaves on her trek which takes her across country, reminisces about Emil in a place special to them, and reaches a hiking hut.

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Transcript

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Beyond the North Wind Chapter eleven Anna moved on, prodding the way ahead with a walking stick, her van der Freunder. For at least an hour she forced herself to walk forwards and not to look back, not even when she bent down to retie her bootlaces. Down in the valley she saw the homes of her friends painted white. She admired afresh the summer farm which looked better from a distance. Up in the hills she was cheered up by the sight of purple heather and light green lichen, a reminder of a vacation in Maine. The fjord sparkled and glinted below, the water now emerald green and shining with minerals from the glacier, a precious supply to the wells of the houses and farms around the fjord. Beyond the sun dappled peaks she saw the glacier shining in the distance. There were many steep slopes rising from the glistening fjord that proved to be a challenge. At point she slipped on the scree and had to pull handfuls of moss off the rocks as she scrambled her way up. She was kilometres away from the ice, walking through a verdant hillside thick with bushes, birches and pines, picking her way up the hill to where cascades and cataracts of water began. Fog drifted over the fjord and the light changed. She was leaving herself behind. The hills bristled with pine trees and the remains of vegetations cleared by avalanches and rock slides. The fjord changed colour. Areas became dark like stone, while in other places the waters continued to ripple and reflect the light blue of the sky. She crossed the last road by a small barn and was pleased the owners were not about. In a grove of raspberry bushes she sat down and picked a handful of fruits and enjoyed them one by one. Hers would be a difficult trek. She had last been across the glacier with a meal maybe five years ago. She was tough in a way that was obstinate, but not a thoroughly tough mentality, rather one that was easily broken. Thoughts of Gunnar intruded. She anticipated the brush of his big body against her leg, of running her hand through his coat, the touch of his brown nose. She scared herself by imagining that she had buried him in the sheep can. The stones of the can came away easily when pressed in with her mind and fingertips. Black suity ash blew up into her face when she peeped inside. Gunnar snarled back at her. His canines much longer than she remembered. His gums had receded. The process of decay had set in. She shook her head to clear the image, forcing herself to keep on walking. She had messed up badly, but now was the time to give herself a break and sort things out. I need help, she thought, and company too. The journey across the glacier was durable in a day, but it was difficult. She took out her mobile and rang the glacier school. A voice answered. She asked about the availability of guides and was in luck. A guide was available at the southwest arm of the mighty glacier. The man on the other end told her mixed weather was expected, but she told him not to worry, that she was well equipped for a day's hike. She gave her DNT membership number and arranged to meet the guide at midday. It felt good to get away, to start her new life, arranging things on the hoof. Hers would be a track of solitude for a short while, then she would have some company as the guides took her over the glacier and mountains and pointed her to the coast. She moved on, and soon the ground grew boggy in places, with larger rocks she slipped on, forcing her to pick her way carefully. At a junction of paths she followed the route marked with a red T and walked on. One of the DNT huts was nearby, and already her legs had begun to ache. At the next junction of path she realized with a shock where she was and turned off the track. This had been one of their favourite places. They had walked around the narrow lanes and wide tracks of the village, visited the river, found a hidden nature reserve, and admired the beauty of the countryside, all the while wrapped up in each other. The photographer out walking with his pretty girlfriend by his side, bounding along like an overgrown schoolboy, while she alternately quickened and slowed to keep a grasp on his hand. Emil wore a pair of cray trousers that reminded Anna of the clothes school children wore, material flapping around his ankles. In the winter he liked to pull on a grey jumper his mother had knitted him, but he was no child, he had his serious side. Emil drew meaning from every plant and animal as a magician draws water from a stone. She sat down on the side of the track under a tree and allowed herself to remember. When they were far away from any buildings and the eyes of the farmers they kissed. His face would become beatific at such times, as if they were more to her lips than skin and blood. Later on in their courting they had returned to their special place, guided by the moonlight to an island in the middle of the gushing water, where they made love like nocturnal elves, and in the morning the imprints of their bodies left behind a flattened ring of luxuriant grass. She reached their special place by a plank bridge over a rushing river, supplied by a waterfall that sprayed her as she crossed. She held onto the stripped pine railings as the bridge moved a little. On the other side a path of mud and tree roots led her to a meadow knee deep in wildflowers and with a roaring waterfall at its focus. She pulled out a red rubber mat from her rucksack and sat down on it in the thick summer grass. The spray and the noise of the crashing water misted over her face. The sound was tremendous, a continual crashing of water bursting into white foam. They had sat here and been soothed by its constant sound many times. On and on the water poured, cycling from the clouds to the top of the glacier, down through the hills to her special place where the water ran under her feet and away to the fjord beneath the summer farm. She wondered what it would have been like to meet herself twenty years earlier in this place. What if a young woman with thick blonde hair was sitting next to her now, in a pretty dress, pensive, excited, like a maiden waiting for her night in a Victorian painting? What would she tell her? That the one she loved was fated to disappear? Would that change her decision to marry him? The sun struggled at the horizon, and she reckoned the time to be nearing noon. Here at the edge of the waterfall the white tipped mountains rose in front of her, and the waterfall cascaded into a peaceful lake. Pure white the water and a fine cloud of spray above it, she could sit all day and watch and listen to its crashing. The sun on her face, the long grasses tickling her head as she laid back in the meadow. Why go on? she would ask her younger self. Who would of course have too much energy? This was as good as it gets, and he will always be here. Why make it more difficult? Further minutes passed and she swapped roles, imagining herself young again, talking with a mysterious traveller, a woman well into middle age who sat next to her, how old her present self must appear, diminished by life's travails, saddened by the way things had turned out. Her older self would have liked to have appeared wise but without the gimmick of special knowledge of the young Anna's life ahead. How could she do that? She thought of her mother and the advice she had been given, and how she had never listened. With some reluctance and an aching in the back of her legs, she got up and made her way back to the path. She touched a tall pole planted in the road as she crossed the path. It was four, nearly five meters high, and last year only its tip had poked out of the snow. Trees had sunk into the earth, houses up to the roofs, the edges of the woods lost beneath the snow. Fritchov was right, one could be forgotten up here for weeks in bad weather. But last year, in the flattest places, when the snowfall had been whipped up like meringues, she had appreciated the beauty of the place. At the next junction the red tea on the fence post pointed her across a meadow, and she knew she was near the hiking hut. She strode on, her brown leather walking boots blazing a trail through the heather. A second wind filled her body, her thoughts of grief and regret were clearing. She was on the way to solving the mystery of Emil's non existence, and as she walked, she allowed Gunnar to run happily along by her side. The hiking hut appeared, a long grey building with wooden plank walls supported on stones, and a turf roof for insulation. She went up the steps to the front door at the end of the building and took out her key.