notes and images
I wanted to write that a glacier is like a living thing, because of the noise it makes, that jarring, creaking sound of ice grinding against ice. But living is the wrong word because any given glacier today is dying. This was only a small one, but once it was bigger, and there is no going back.
Continue readingThe fastest wind speed ever recorded at Tarfala was over 180 kilometers per hour. As I leaned into it, unable to move forwards, and barely able to stand, I thought it must not be too far short of that record. Strangely, there was no howl; there was nothing for the wind to hit except me, our daughter in my pack, and Yon about twenty paces behind. No howl, just a sudden horrendous flapping as the red sheet protecting my child flew loose at one corner.
“Are you scared, baby?”, I yelled. “No”, she said. “Well just a little bit”.
We were 26 kilometers into this hike; even for Arctic Sweden it was getting dark by now, nearly ten hours since we set off at noon. I was wet through, and, as Hicks and Hudson classically exchanged, either my motion detector GPS was reading wrong, or I was reading it wrong.
Where was the damn hut?
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One hundred kilometers in ten days through Arctic Sweden, with full camping gear and a three year old. Sounds like a good plan right? Hmmm, maybe not so much. Sometimes – just sometimes – the determination not to be those people who gave up everything they loved after having a child in favour of the Eternal Lightness of Brunch can go just a little bit too far. In this case, 42 kilometers of painful load carrying too far.
But seen another way, we pulled off a five day, 42 kilometer trek through Arctic Sweden with our three year old. She, and we, actually had a blast. Mission accomplished. Just.
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Åland is one of those great places one’s never heard of, and doesn’t know how to pronounce. Tiny, clean, and not much to do but enjoy the fresh air and beautiful autumn. Home to the Flying P-Liners, glorious tall ships of the turn of the century grain trade, it was a lovely stopover between our touristy, but satisfying, visits to Oslo and Stockholm in 2005.
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