Safe Return Doubtful

The title is something I found while reading recently, and was actually a school classroom motto from rural Wisconsin in the year 1900. I think it’s tremendous.

It’s applicable for me also, not because as I go further north the mountains will get higher, but because the journey will become more wild. It has already done so since Monday, I’m in Nordland now, just 50 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, 23 hours of daylight at this time of year, and the populations on the islands I visit is less, and the visitors they receive are less, though in a week or so, when the summer season kicks in, I’m sure there will be more.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable three days on Husøya, and I hiked today on some of the trails I hadn’t yet been on. My aim was the lump of rock on the southwest side called Hikkeltinden. We followed the tracks and trails around to it, but the gate of the pasture that the lump lay in was tied up, as that bit of land had many sheep on it. I thought it best not to bother, and found a trail instead to cut across to the northwest corner of the island, where we were a couple of days ago.

I met two young guys on the way out on the trail, a local Norwegian and a Ukrainian who were taking half an hour out from a job they were doing in preparation for the music festival. The Ukrainian guy didn’t speak much English, as, his friend told me, he was learning Norwegian. He is one of three families the island has taken since the war. The reason he isn’t defending his country is that he is autistic, in his mid twenties, and here with his mother.

On the return I met a woman I have met each day when out on the trails. We acknowledged each other each time, but only stopped to chat today. She had seen me headed for Sanna yesterday, and was keen to know what I thought. It’s impossible on an island as small as this to visit and stay under the radar, she knew where the van was, and even Roja’s name..

We then took the ferry at 3:15 pm this afternoon, not back to Stokkvagen, but to the islands of Onøya and Lurøya which are on route, and connected together by a bridge.

It was the latter that I was keen on, as it seemed less populated and dominated by a 685 metre mountain, Lurøyafjellet. It took just ten minutes to find a beach on the west side ideal for staying at.

Last night a storm blew through between about 9 pm and the early hours of the morning. There were some showers, but it a wind event, so much that it tipped the garbage bin and took it twenty metres from close to where I was, and necessitated me roping down my window screen. The first half hour this morning was spent tidying the garbage. But as the day proceeded the wind lessened, so that now, early evening, it is just a gentle breeze, and plenty of sun.