Nova Scotia

Landfall in Nova Scotia was tricky. Coming from Bay of Fundy we had patches of fog and the world's highest tides to consider. It was crucial to time it right before entering Grand Passage. But everything turned out right and we had a good rest at Brier Island.

Leafing through the guidebook I suddenly realized that Joshua Slocum had spent parts of his childhood here. I got the feeling that Brier Island was holy ground. 

There was a guy at the dock who casually informed us about his distant relative. In fact, he invited us to his old house where the documentary about Slocum had a scene or two. History came to life. Everything in the house seemed untouched for a generation or two.

We left Brier Island in dead calm, but with a 4 knot current and standing waves in the riptide. It spat us out in a grey wall of fog. It's hard to imagine a place like this without gps. Joshua Slocum had the trickiest training ground on earth.

This is the cat

We got a new cat in Canada. It disappeared after a couple of weeks. We plastered missing cat posters all over. Then I heard a woman calling out to the boat. This is the cat, she shouted.

It turned out to be a different cat. But I couldn't say for sure, since our cat had been missing for two weeks already. I thought she might have changed.

Nina found our cat the next day. Now we had two cats. They were almost identical, a siamese mix of some sort.

We entered Hudson River in the autumn. The trees were all ablaze. I had really radiant dreams. 

But the hunting season had started and we could hear what sounded like regular shootouts at dusk. These guys were serious, with camouflage painted faces.

I was about to take the cat ashore. The cat was at the bow, hesitating. From the dinghy I could see her puffy upper lip and I suddenly got a vague thought about John Malkovitch. I might have been worried about the hunting militia. We hardly saw any wildlife but I felt unsafe in the ongoing war against ducks and deers. 

So I rowed slowly ashore, kind of reluctant. I had promised to take better pictures of the cat. Just in case she disappeared again.

Glass doors

She said her children was quite picky when it came to food. Children's strict likes and dislikes are apparantly connected to their identity. "Later we realize that we're no one, and can't stop eating."

Weapons of Mass Deception

The past and the future takes place right now, in our minds. It's possible to get away from it all. Not by death but by living.

At the bookstore

"I saw this beautiful woman at the bookstore, and — afraid of being looked upon as too old — I looked at her with disgust."

Vancouver in the dark

I still wonder why the Chinese were so afraid of me taking pictures. They ducked their heads as if they were dodging bullets. Or they picked up a phone, letting me discreetly know that steps were taken.

I kept riding. I had borrowed a bike from some friends and in the dark I could stop wearing that damn helmet. 

Fort St. John

Driving north in British Columbia our Canadian friends told us that we better curb our enthusiasm for Fort St. John. 

"Most of the town has sprung up the last decades. It's more or less a provisional centre for the surrounding oil industry. In fact, you'll see it's downright ugly. There's also a terrible wind blowing dust all through the damn summer. This time of year it's wet though. Mud will cake to your shoes. Forget everything you've ever known about mud. This is mud like you would not believe it. Cars stop dead in their tracks. Venture out on these dirt roads and you'll be stuck for good."

I've always felt sympathetic with people who can tell the truth about their home town. If we wanted Disneyland, we would have gone to Disneyland.

Anger in its nature

I'm wondering why people living close to wildlife often develop anger towards certain animals. During our prolonged stay in Canada I've heard people bad-mouthing wolves, coyotes, foxes, snakes, gray jays, crows, ravens, rabbits, mice, pack rats, squirrels, porcupines, skunks, bears and eagles.

Sometimes the anger spills over to nature itself, as some kind of evil that has to be beaten down. It's a constant battle. There's too much of everything.

I know this attitude from Norway - and it's still going on, even though the wilderness is long gone.

Going south

One of the things I love about photography is the way it turns around a boring situation, like waiting for the bus in the early morning.

It was 6.30 in Fort St. John, and people were still in a state of slumber. But maybe they didn't see any point in waking up, since most of them were heading south on a very long bus ride.

In the middle of nowhere

The Greyhound bus stops in the middle of nowhere. Or so it seems. The passengers have become kind of careless about all these places. Canada is a vast country, and the distances involved can wear your interest down. So on this stop I see only a few heads turning, like 'how can anybody live here?'

Most of the passengers go out to stretch their legs or have a smoke. I'm eavesdropping quite a bit. We've been on the bus for hours and I'm bored. But then I feel slightly uneasy when a couple of guys starts talking about the beheading some years back. That was also on a Greyhound bus, leaving people in a state of shock on the darkening Trans-Canada Highway.

I'm puzzled when my fellow passengers somehow find it likely that the victim must have pissed off the guy. I guess they have a need to think away the randomness, but does it make the beheading more likely?

The bus continues through vast areas of dead pines. It's the brown beetle infested woods that's been around us for hours. 

Arguing about the last leg

From the inside of the cabin I could hear him getting angry. Swearing, banging the walls. But now the leg was mine.

Bad dog

 

We drove into the woods. We had arranged a meeting with an elderly couple, living on a buffalo farm.

They had several hash brown dogs that obviously weren't used to strangers. In the barking and general commotion it broke out a fight between two of them.

The biggest dog had the smallest by the throat, shaking it like a rat. It wouldn't let go even though I pulled by the hind legs. The owners decided that this was it and went for the gun. 

We drove off with the bad dog chasing. The couple talked each other up to go through with the plan, even though the whole thing seemed more on the spur of the moment. I kept looking out the rear window. It was kind of strange to see a dog running to its own execution, but the dog was mean and I guess he had it coming. 

The couple disagreed about where to do it. Finally he just stopped the car, rolled down the window and grabbed the rifle. She suggested that he better step out. Shooting from inside the car would surely burst our eardrums.

I couldn't really see anything from where I was sitting. The rifle sounded flat and sharp. He came back and we took off. He was still agitated, red-faced. After a while she said it was stupid to leave the dog where we left it. Sooner or later some hunters would pass by, and wonder.

 

We took the dog by the legs and started swinging. We threw it down a slope on the count of three, leaving a trail of blood in the snow.

Back in the cabin they kept talking about the dog. I guess they needed to justify the killing. We where standing on the newly painted floor when I noticed a speck of blood between us. It was kind of strange because it wasn't smeared out by the shoes. We started to look up towards the ceiling. Did it drop from somewhere? We never found out.

Stress in the city

 

In Vancouver we bought an expensive herbal tea. It tasted like rotten grass but was supposed to have a calming effect. After five cups of this I realized it had no effects whatsoever. Thinking about the price I even got a bit upset.

The buffaloes

Suddenly I heard Nina shout: "Hey, where have you been?" I had no idea. I was walking around with a heavy buffalo head, not really sure where to put it.

Airports

I've always liked airports. I like how people from all over the world drift through and fluctuate in the transparency of modern architecture. People become a part of the surface. They are all well dressed and beautiful, passing by as shadows and ghosts.

 

I guess a pop artist like, say Andy Warhol, would have loved these new international airports. It's like they have a surface of teflon where nothing emotional really sticks. We're all just passing through. We have no purpose beyond going on a business trip or a holiday.

 

Traveling has become the empty eye which so much of our modern living is revolving around; we're confusing traveling with the wild idea that our lives are getting somewhere. Discovering that we're going nowhere we put up blogs as a metaphor for change.

Vancouver, Phoenix, Toronto, Copenhagen; it's this kind of prolonged suffering that we all love to talk about. Restlessness clocks us.

The fear of enthusiasm

I silently dislike Nina's enthusiasm when sailing offshore. Sure, I love dolphins or a good breeze, but I would never dare to say so.

It's my belief that enthusiasm brings bad luck. Forget about umbrellas, whistling or leaving on a Friday; outspoken enthusiasm could really sink a boat.

I never had this superstition while we stayed the winter at Tapawingo. We saw a black bear not more than ten meters from our cabin door, and my enthusiasm had no limits.


But the fear of enthusiasm runs deep in the Canadian wild. Our story about the bear got played down, like "so you got to see the forest pig, aye?"

This was typical among the trappers and fishermen at Bistcho Lake; they loved wild animals, but would never dare to say so. Black bears were often called 'forest pigs', squirrels 'tree rats', and once we heard a trapper call a flock of snowy-white ptarmigans for a 'bunch of ducks'. But the lack of enthusiasm didn't seem to be for superstitious reasons.

In the wilderness you'll gain your respect through nonchalance and coolness. You have seen it all before.

The killing of wolves

There're few animals as mythical as wolves. They're the top predator in the boreal forest: intelligent, strong, fast and even organized. A pack of wolves are an efficient killing machine. That's what they do for a living. This means they compete with humans, who kill for fun -mostly- and who have to go further and further before seeing an elk, a moose or a dear.

But also wolves can kill for fun. It's been known that they sometimes go on a killing spree among sheep. There's been offered a biological explanation for this behavior: the killing of sheep doesn't wear out the wolves. A modern sheep is so cross-bred that it can't run fast. It's just meat and wool. This kind of live-stock is a piece of cake for the wolves, and there's probably nothing to the kill that trigger the wolves to stop. This makes the farmers bring out their guns.

The wolves always seem to stirr up emotions and controversy. At least in those countries where they're still around. What we often see is a polarized discussion between rural and urban areas; between the working class and the middle class; between those who see the wolves and those who wish to see them.

It's a discussion that goes way back. The wolves even play the role as a scapegoat in a much deeper conflict -i.e. the centralization of power and the historical mischief of rural areas.

But in Norway the farmers have won (joined by the hunters). The last two-three decades we've had one pack of wolves in Norway. That was the compromise with the government. Around six wolves, that is. Apparently this number was too high; not one wolf will be allowed in Norway anymore, not on a permanent basis.

In Canada they still have some understanding of the wilderness. There is no lack of wolves either. The province of Alberta -almost twice as big as Norway- has around 3500-4000 wolves. When we stayed at Tapawingo, in the NW corner of Alberta, we often saw fresh wolf tracks in the snow. Occasionally we heard them howl. But we hardly ever saw them. The wolves were extremely shy. They avoided humans as the plague.

To actually see a wolf, in the wild, is a privilege that keeps lingering in your brain, in your very soul, for a long time. In that respect I would claim that wolves not only kill, they also gives our lives depth and meaning; they give life, so to speak.

Everything is alive

I consider myself an atheist. I didn't even believe in God as a child. Actually, I'm a bit proud of this. The religious atrocities, in the name of God, are simply the way these monotheistic systems work out.

This morning I looked at the pictures from Bistcho Lake. None of the desert religions fit well with the boreal forest in the dead of winter. In 50 degrees below zero it's sort of hard to imagine, say, Jesus dressed in robe and sandals.

Still, this was the place where religious thoughts came into head.


I went for a walk twice a day. I always walked alone. After seven or eight months it seemed rather obvious: everything was alive. Everything was somehow charged.

But I never did cross that line. I never really came into the cabin and started to talk metaphysical gibberish to Nina. I held on to our notion of a rational world, though the feeling of being seen really made me wonder.

I guess the natives got it right in the first place.

The bald eagle

The bald eagle is not bald at all. I wonder how they came up with this misnomer. A better name would be “whitehead eagle”, but I guess it’s too late now.

We saw these immense birds in the fall. They seemed unapproachable then, and always kept their distance.

They returned early in the spring, before the ice was gone. Food was scarce and the bald eagles started to circle over Tapawingo Lodge. Their calls were a long thin shriek that sounded desperate. It’s not easy on an empty belly.

We once counted eleven bald eagles at the same time. The ice was still thick on Bistcho Lake, no open water for the eagles to catch fish. It was a bit strange. Why did they return to the Canadian north so early?

The ice melted in May, almost two months after the first bald eagles arrived. The bald eagles once again kept their distance, and regained their pride and posture.

Walking

Most writers like to walk. They can continue writing while walking. It gives great agitation, as in the novella Walking (1971), by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, where the actual walk is more abstract than the thoughts while walking.

Henry David Thoreau’s Walking (1861), is an essay that probes deep in the art of walking. It’s a kind of knowledge that doesn’t change much, but still, it's uncanny the way he anticipates our modern life. Thoreau’s walking is the opposite of Bernhard’s; the walk overtakes the thoughts; the walk in nature puts the walker straight.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about Thoreau: The length of his walk uniformly made the length of his writing. If shut up in the house, he did not write at all.

When we stayed the winter at Tapawingo, in Alberta, Canada, the wilderness demanded solitude and silence, if we wanted to see any wildlife. But me and Nina also preferred to walk alone for another reason; the thoughts got cleansed by nature, because the mind got distracted by something bigger than itself. Talking would destroy all this.

Annie Dillard wrote, in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, that walking in nature is not so much about seeing, as being seen. We're not really thinking either, it's nature thinking through us.