September 7, 2016
The scary-good thing today was a hair-cutting event. Martin was quite traumatized at the prospect of turning over his head and hair over to an outlander in a foreign land. He had been going to the same predictable barber, John, for the last twenty years. However, now, even he conceded, he was looking a bit shaggy.
Strolling through downtown Floro, it was beginning to look bleak. It was 4:00 in the afternoon, and most stores were closed for the day. We needed cash. The bank, in a converted warehouse down by the wharf, had closed at 3:30. We finally sought assistance from a grocery clerk, who directed us to a gigantic, rusty anchor, behind which was hidden an ATM.
We took the money and ran, past several “frissors”. They did not embolden him, even though he had a qualified therapist by his side. His therapist achieved complete rapport for his terror, upon sighting the advertisement you see above.
Finally, we ended up at one of the more conservative salons. Martin sat in the chair before Anna, a sweet-voiced German girl with broken English, pink hair, nose piercings, and tattoos all up and down her arms. He took a deep breath, and tried to explain “business cut”.
She commenced. It turned out to be the best haircut I’ve ever seen on Martin. He could get a job in Norway pronto with a style like that. At the thought of “job”, we decided to get out of town fast.
Today we left our cabin on the edge of the forest and the shore of the fjord in a rain storm. Along the way, we shot through endless tunnels cutting through massive mountains of stone. We skimmed past along lakes and along the coast through mist, drizzle, and deluge.
ppear from across the silver sea. Layer upon layer of pale grey, dark grey, misty blue peaks emerged, veiled by shifting clouds.
Serendipity is delightful! We were driving on a forested road back to our cabin after a demanding and rewarding hike to the top of a peak overlooking the fjord, the valleys and layer upon layer of mountains. Why am I not writing to you about that impressive scene? We planned it, we persevered, and we conquered it. We have bragging rights.
The answer is this: Serendipity. Something caught my eye, something unusual. Martin pulled the car over. He started towards the overlook. “No,” I called, “it’s over here.” We looked down at a steep gorge, with flat rocks that tumbled in every imaginable angle and massive rectangles of stone making deranged stair steps. It looked as though a mighty castle had been swept off a high cliff by Thor himself, and had crashed in pieces down a plunging chute. Here was a a suggestion of an ancient stone wall, there was a ledge like a rampart, here was a giant cornerstone thrown by some unfathomable force greater than anything we have ever witnessed.
All this was remarkable. But it was the very absence of something that was even more amazing. One would expect to see in such a precipitous gorge deep, churning water gushing down the mountain. Not so. Water languidly pooled and gurgled and slowly made its way down, no deeper than a foot or two. In this wild place, forged with huge forces, there was calm.
And there was something else even more extraordinary: Bright green, spongy mosses covered the banks with tufts a foot deep. Everything was blanketed in nature’s velvet. Below, every rock wore its mantle of green. Walking across a six-foot slab in the gorge was like stepping from a shower onto a plush bathmat. What looked treacherous from above, when encountered up close, became a benign paradise. You could step from one stone to the next without ever touching water, without fear of slipping. Up ahead, a place where you might plunge to your death in a cascade of water. No, merely natural steps leading to the next calm pool, spread with spongy green cushions.
