APRIL 10, 2020 – My daily breakfast fare includes blueberries. Each serving reminds me of the time I (nearly) fell from an airplane and (actually) landed in heaven—the largest patch of wild blueberries on earth. This defining event occurred two-thirds of the way through my Grand Odyssey around the globe. Years later, when my mother confided that when I’d embarked on that trip, she feared she’d never see me again, I thought about my “close call”—and salvation among those blueberries.
I’d wanted to see “the far north” of Norway, and in the course of my research, I’d discovered the Lofoten Islands—an archipelago extending from Narvik into the Norwegian Sea, north of the arctic circle. By a long train passage from Stockholm north to Kiruna, then over to Narvik and a ferry to the town of Svolvær, I reached the lead island of Austvågøy.
At a youth hostel, I met a fellow adventurer, Göran from Östersund, Sweden. He’d been to the Lofoten Islands before and had returned for some extended hiking amidst some of the most ruggedly, knock-your-socks-off scenery in all of Scandinavia. Göran invited me to join him on a route he’d mapped out for the day after my arrival.
After a hearty breakfast, we loaded our daypacks with extra clothing, raingear, water bottles, and a little food, and walked to a trailhead at the end of Svolvær. Göran led the way up a long but easy climb to a point above a locally famous rock formation called, “The Goat.” The view was stupendous.
“The Goat” itself is a tower of bare rock 490 feet high, with two rock “horns” five feet apart, jutting straight up from the top. On a dare, climbers leap from one “horn” to the other.
The backdrop far below—the town and harbor of Svolvær, craggy peaks beyond, and looking out across the endless sea—renders hikers speechless and visually stunned. Eventually, however, it was time to continue along the route Göran had chosen, one filled with one spectacular vista after another.
As we progressed, weather moved in. In the misty drizzle we donned our raingear. Soon the path led from the open area above “The Goat,” down through a narrows and onto a ledge. Over Göran’s shoulders I saw . . . what looked like what you see out from an airplane well after take-off. I gulped.
Göran turned—cautiously—to his left and proceeded as I watched from the opening at the narrows, clinging tightly to the rocks. It seemed I was clutching the edge of an open doorway on an airplane—without a parachute. The Swede made his way gingerly down the sloping ledge, which by this time, was quite wet—and slippery, I feared. Worse, in addition to sloping down in the direction of our route, the foot-to-a-foot-and-a-half-wide ledge sloped away from the side of the mountain. Slip and you really would be jumping from an airplane—without a parachute!
(Cont.)
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
