In a tiny silver rental car a small crew of friends blazed across the landscape of Sweden’s neighbor to the north, Norway. Jaws dropped hour after hour as an unstoppable wave of immaculate landscapes became the majestic backdrop to five days and 1,914km of memories.
Sprawling green fields, fjords whose unfathomable expanses swallowed all senses, the sunny seaside, epic mountain ascents accompanied by heart pounding descents, raging waterfalls, and pleateaus that stretched on and on ellicited the only reponses that could be come up with time after time; “Wow”, “Holy Shit”, and the requisite “Fuck”.
Eyes and mind were stretched a thousand fold by nature. The feeling of being small and rather inconsequential in the larger scheme of things was at times overwhelming. And, coupled with my losing/misplacing the car keys in the middle of a dense thicket next to a waterfall and then successfully finding our proverbial needle in the haystack—well, to say that the overall experience was not in some way religious or spiritual would be an untruth.
Sleeping in a car on the Søgnefjord, in a tent by the sea near Bergen, and then in a desolate mountain valley on top of a plateau might not have provided us with much comfortable sleep, but it sure has made a lasting impression.
Cheers to that.