Day 67 – to Blåfjella-Skjækerfjella (north west entrance)

Blåfjella-Skjækerfjella National Park is the third largest national park on the Norwegian mainland, and one of the largest remaining true wilderness areas. Part of it was established as a National Park as early as 1970, but enlarged greatly in 2004. Sami people used to live in the Park, and there are many cultural monuments, burial sites and sacred places.

There are good opportunities for hunting, fishing and hiking, but to access anything but the edges requires a stay in one of several huts in the Park.

I drove west just 20 kilometres this morning to use the north east entrance. From the car park just off the main road it is a 5 kilometre walk to the park boundary, marked by a standing stone on an unnamed peak at 670 metres. The first couple of kilometres are enough to make the most determined hiker curse in derision. It is an unplanked bog. It’s a new car park, so I expect to board the path is in the pipeline, but for now, it’s a tough and wet trudge. But then the path begins to climb, and the reward comes with a view of surrounding peaks and tarns of various sizes, above the treeline.

Back at the van for lunch I met a Frenchman, the third solo-traveller I’ve met in this journey who is sleeping in his car. This guy was quite a serious outdoor adventurer though, with what looked like decent gear. I still can’t work out though why camping in a tent isn’t more comfortable, especially when away for a relatively long period of time, in this guy’s case, 6 weeks.

I had no specific plans of where to travel to in the afternoon, except that the closer to the west coast the clearer the sky, and the warmer the temperature. I ended up investigating the access to the National Park from the north west, which starts with a 9 kilometre gravel and potholed track that I took. I’ve found a place for the night far away from any other habitation, or indeed people. I’ll hike further into the Park tomorrow.

I wrote a couple of book reviews in the early evening, perhaps of most internet, a 1937 forgotten novel called Gentleman Overboard, in which..

Henry Preston Standish of Central Park West; partner of Pym, Bingley and Standish, member of the Finance, Athletic, and Yale Clubs, father of two, is a gentleman. Taking a well-earned break from his busy life he joins a leisurely cruise from Honolulu to Panama, with just 8 paying passengers. But early one morning while taking a stroll around the deck, he slips on some kitchen grease and plunges into the Pacific Ocean.

It’s quite a scenario, and finds the reader asking themselves exactly what it would be like to fall off a ship in the middle of the ocean. It may be better described as an experiment rather than a scenario.

The reader’s interest early on in the piece is as to whether he survives, but after a while, that comes to matter less. Standish represents everyman in the ‘experiment’… what sort of things would go through one’s mind, what emotions would one feel, so skilled and ingenious is Lewis’s writing.