Norway, 1998

My feet thawed, after a day of soaking waterfall scouting, my belly full of tomato pasta eaten from the pot - here I sit next to [name] in a little wooden cabin just outside Vik, and for the moment I am contentment. How strange that thin veil between the familiar routine existence and the exotically different experience. It has been but four days since tricking time and space and skipping continents in the wink of an eye. London welcomed us like an old friend, ancient and modern, bustling and leisurely. Familiar places, rituals and sensations stoked memories of days gone by when this city was home-from-home, family-from-family.

Like scholars of history, we walked through the Towers of the past, appreciating that perhaps we do live in a kinder, gentler world today, albeit less enduring. Like wise and enchanted children, we raised up our shadowy Beast to the Beauty of light and joined them in sacred trust. Then, laughing, stood astride an imaginary line dividing the fictitious lands of East and West.

Since riding the longitude North, we have entered the land of Trolls and been deliciously swallowed up by forested mountains, tumultuous waterfalls and expansive fjords. Shrinking against the landscape, we have swelled inside with pleasure.

Wrote The Giant White Hand, a poem about the spectacular glaciers of Norway.