We woke up in the morning and the pipes were frozen. The temperature outside was -18, and the snow hadn't fallen for some time, so it shouldn't really have come as any surprise, but as a child of the late 20th Century I never fail to be appalled by a lack of hot running water on demand. We did all we could to heat up the cellar, where the pipes enter the house. We left all the taps on and we headed out for a walk. Our neigbour, whose husband is away with work, had invited us on a trip up to the frozen lake where the kids go skating at this time of year.
Our neighbours live on a farm with a horse and many goats. When we got over there we found that they had also temporarily adopted a dog. One thing that worries me about farm animals is the way that their faces are like human faces but arranged a little differently; in the case of a horse the head seems much too big and bent out of shape with the nose pushed forward and the eyes to the sides, but basically there's a clear resemblance to a human head. About dogs I only know what I have read in books by Konrad Lorenz, which includes the idea that there are two types. One type is related to the wolf and will accept only one human master in its lifetime (the husky is of this type). The other will naively accept anyone who seems friendly. Our dog, Sheba, seemed to be of the second kind, and she nominated me as her master for the day. With our neighbour's daughter on horseback and with a dog running around me, we set off into the hills.
When we were walking through the the small valley behind our house, Marthe called to me to stop. "Listen to the mountain," she said. It was true that you could hear it. Shortly afterwards the sun broke over the horizon for the first time this year. The first thing I noticed was that I got my shadow back. The next thing was that there were colours I didn't know had gone missing. I had noticed that throughout the dark period all photographs came out looking blue, but I hadn't realised quite what a limited palette I'd been seeing. Yellow and orange were were suddenly everywhere, but also red, some pink, about half the green spectrum, most shades of brown... and that was just looking at the heather on the ground. There was colour everywhere; it was like I'd had my sight partially restored.
When we got to the lake it was a light frozen blue. There were deep cracks in the ice, but I wasn't worried about it breaking, because the horse was walking across it. Other neighbours came with their children and built a fire in a circle of stones. Kids skated, people cooked sausages and we looked out at the view.
The sun was soon gone and it grew colder. I decided to go a little further up a nearby slope and look out across the fjord. The dog, Sheba, came with me. She was faster than I was over the snow, but patient with me. When we got to the top she sat by my side and looked out across the landscape and I understood why it is people go walking with dogs.
The journey back down was not a success. Somehow I took a lot of the slope head-first and after falling for a few meters I hit a tree. I was lying in the snow, the dog was jumping on and around me worriedly, and I heard myself saying, "Man, that really hurt." When I stood up I was pretty dizzy and there were different shades of pain in my jaw, my neck and my back. I found Marthe and we decided to head back to the house and to take our neighbour's daughter with us, as she was crying from the cold.
It wasn't until we got back to the house that I became aware I was missing my glasses and my house keys. I don't think there's any need to lock your house if you live where we live, but city anxieties are hard let go of. We'd left the place intruder-proof. Marthe took our crying six year old friend home while I headed back up into the forest.
The fire was still burning, but the others had left. I made my way up to where I'd hit the tree and I found my glasses sticking out of the snow. I think I might have made a deal with God on the way up without realising it, because the glasses were what I was more worried about. The keys were nowhere to be seen. Marthe arrived and we searched some more, but it was too dark.
We stayed the night at our neighbour's place, where she gave us porridge, we had showers, Marthe drank red wine and I slept for around twelve hours. This morning there were icy gales blowing in across the water and the temperature had dropped to -21. We went up to look for the keys one last time. The winds pushed us across the frozen lake like hockey pucks, we could hardly stand up when searching around the remains of the fire, and the slope where I had fallen was frozen hard.
Back at the house we smashed a window and let ourselves in, just as any self-respecting thief would have done, door locked or otherwise. The pipes were still frozen. We nailed some cardboard over the hole we'd made in the glass.
The winds are still tearing across the fjord. The fire is burning in our stove. They say that the temperature will rise to around Zero on Wednesday, so we hope the taps will then start working.
The journey back down was not a success. Somehow I took a lot of the slope head-first and after falling for a few meters I hit a tree. I was lying in the snow, the dog was jumping on and around me worriedly, and I heard myself saying, "Man, that really hurt." When I stood up I was pretty dizzy and there were different shades of pain in my jaw, my neck and my back. I found Marthe and we decided to head back to the house and to take our neighbour's daughter with us, as she was crying from the cold.
It wasn't until we got back to the house that I became aware I was missing my glasses and my house keys. I don't think there's any need to lock your house if you live where we live, but city anxieties are hard let go of. We'd left the place intruder-proof. Marthe took our crying six year old friend home while I headed back up into the forest.
The fire was still burning, but the others had left. I made my way up to where I'd hit the tree and I found my glasses sticking out of the snow. I think I might have made a deal with God on the way up without realising it, because the glasses were what I was more worried about. The keys were nowhere to be seen. Marthe arrived and we searched some more, but it was too dark.
We stayed the night at our neighbour's place, where she gave us porridge, we had showers, Marthe drank red wine and I slept for around twelve hours. This morning there were icy gales blowing in across the water and the temperature had dropped to -21. We went up to look for the keys one last time. The winds pushed us across the frozen lake like hockey pucks, we could hardly stand up when searching around the remains of the fire, and the slope where I had fallen was frozen hard.
Back at the house we smashed a window and let ourselves in, just as any self-respecting thief would have done, door locked or otherwise. The pipes were still frozen. We nailed some cardboard over the hole we'd made in the glass.
The winds are still tearing across the fjord. The fire is burning in our stove. They say that the temperature will rise to around Zero on Wednesday, so we hope the taps will then start working.
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