Wild Norway

I made it to Norway eventually and swept into a round of parties, meeting cousins of all shapes and sizes (my maternal grandmother having been Norwegian). The weather was atrocious – even worse than in the UK – but here are some pictures of the beautiful landscape.

 

On the first day I walked with my brother and sister-in-law and two English friends of my aunt to this lake, which Frog and I had found near the hotel five years earlier. In spite of non-stop rain, I thought the lake was prettier this time. Perhaps the heatwave on my previous visit had withered the greenery.

 Lake, jetty and granite

The jetty is for swimming. The Norwegians are very hearty and, even though the temperature was about 14, as we walked back two boys were leaping in and out of the water.

The rock in the foreground is not broken concrete but granite, which comes to the surface everywhere.

 

Here is the hotel garden on my last day, when of course the sun came out, and here is another lump of granite. How the trees manage to grow on it, I have no idea.

 

Hotel garden

As children, we spent our summer holidays by the sea in Norway and clambered over the rocks in bare feet, as this was the best way we found to grip them.

Also on my last day, I found this enticing path signed ‘Kyststien’ which I guessed meant coast path. I wished I’d found it earlier.

 Coast path

Most of the interior of the country (below the treeline) is forested with pines but here, by the coast, were some broadleaved trees – oak, silver birch, rowan. Also scrumptious wild raspberries, another feature of my childhood.

  

This is the beach in front of the hotel, but I didn’t brave the sea.

 

Hotel beach

On my penultimate day, I went for lunch with one of my aunt’s daughters. She lives on the outskirts of Kristiansand.

Here is her view.

The view from my cousin's house

 

And here is the path from her garden to forest and mountain.

The path from my cousin's garden

On my last morning, I walked round Kristiansand with my brother and sister-in-law. 

Here is the harbour, not what you’d expect next to a city.

 Kristiansand harbour

People were picnicking and swimming.

As you can see, nowhere in Norway is far from nature, although according to a cousin that is changing as the population expands.

That breaks my heart, as (in my experience) Norway is one of the last wild places left in this part of the world.

Return to Norway

Five years ago Frog and I went to Norway for the 75^th birthday party of my aunt who lives there. (I wrote about it in this blog - see 'Seven Days in Norway' in the column on the right.) Last week I went on my own for her 80^th birthday party. It was the first time I’d travelled abroad alone since my early twenties. I was petrified.

We took off from England in rain and wind, the sort of weather we seemed to have been having for weeks, and the plane juddered through the clouds.

For once I had a whole window to myself, not half a window, or a bit of wall, or a window over someone’s shoulder.

So when we came out of the clouds, I saw this and my brain took off. I left the normal world behind and felt as if I was in outer space.

 

In outer space

We landed at Amsterdam in more rain and taxied around the vast concourse.

As usual, in spite of the announcement asking people to remain seated until the plane had stopped and the fasten seatbelt signs had been switched off, people clicked open their seatbelts, stood up and began getting their luggage out of the overhead lockers.

I stayed sitting -- I was in no hurry as I had a four-hour wait for my plane to Kristiansand in Norway – and managed to snap this man in his cartographical jacket (and trousers to match).

Frog would have been proud of him. He didn’t approve of drabness for men.

 

Cartographical man

And this twin of our plane. I love the name ‘Cityhopper’.

Cityhopper

And (from the terminal) this sign on a bus. All the buses were powered by either wind or sun, which I suppose meant they were electric. I applauded the airport’s environmental efforts.

 

Powered by Dutch windmills

In spite of that, however, hardly any of the many water fountains around the terminal that I remembered from my first visit, were still working.

Never mind. I had a long walk to my gate (24 minutes according to the board, which stretched in several volumes across a wall), so perhaps I’d find one en route from which I could refill my bottle.

 

A fragment of the board

Schipol airport was the same incomprehensible chaos that I remembered from before. Then I’d had Frog to find the way. Now I was on my own. I started walking.

All will be well

I’ve mentioned before my guru Louise Hay and her book You Can Heal Your Life.

 

I’ve also mentioned my disinclination at the moment to get out of bed in the morning and face the world, and the bad back and leg that have crippled me since November.

Last night when I couldn’t sleep yet again because of the pain in my right calf, which paracetamol hadn’t touched, I decided to explore with the help of my beloved Notebook what was going on.

According to Louise, pain in the lower leg is caused by fear of the future and not wanting to move on. The affirmation (to counteract that) is:

I move forward with confidence and joy, knowing that all will be well in my future.

I said this to myself over and over and found myself sobbing so I knew she was right.

I’ve been through this process again and again recently and I keep forgetting, and falling into old ways, and believing what everyone else says instead of what I say deep inside me. For instance, out of fear I’ve been to see a physiotherapist, which is what my doctor recommended for my back and leg, even though I don't normally do conventional medicine, and all it’s done is make me feel worse. 

One day, I might manage to hold on to me.

And, of course, as I might also have said before, that is what this time since Frog’s death is all about. I have the idea that moving on will take me away from him, but actually it will take me towards him. 

Even though Frog and I had the deepest of connections, I couldn’t be myself when he was here because I was too preoccupied with being a good wife, with being what I thought he wanted. He removed himself in order to help me and now, in order to rejoin him, I have to face the world without him and learn to be me. It’s bloody terrifying.

Wish me luck.

And in case none of that makes sense, which is more than likely, here are some pictures from the last week or two. Isn’t the world beautiful? Why on earth should I fear it?

Floods

Shining Cranesbill, a tiny flower named for its shiny leaves (the small roundish ones)

The nearby Weeping Willow, waving its hair-like tresses

My Secret Wood, a fluff of greeny-brown about to burst into life

The buds of Holly flowers, another secret

Dandelions like suns and Dandelions with Speedwell, the colour of the sky. (Spot the dog.)

A benevolent tonal Buddha*

From 1977 to 2019 Frog (my late husband) was connected with Exeter University’s student radio station. He looked after the equipment and gave continuity and advice to the ever-changing student members. He also presented his own programme, The Frog Prog, on which he played his unique choice of music, both popular and classical, from all eras, and passed on his encyclopaedic knowledge of all things musical.

Last June, past members of the radio station put together a tribute programme for Frog

https://www.mixcloud.com/XpressionShowcase/john-frog-whitworth-memorial-show/

and I’ve been crying my way through it. Sometimes they really catch his character and talents and it’s given me a whole new appreciation of him.

I’ve been doing a lot of crying lately. Since November in fact when I acquired a bad back. The pain then went to my legs where it has stuck ever since. It’s terrified me because, now I’m on my own, I have to manage. I can’t be ill or incapacitated. I have a dog to mind.

Ellie at one year old. She's now twelve and a half.

But what I realised this morning is that the pain has made me get in touch with my feelings. It’s lowered my defences and let the grief come to the surface. It’s given me time. I haven’t been able to rush around clearing Frog’s stuff, forging a ‘new life’ and being brave. I’ve spent a lot of time alone, in my dressing-gown, writing in my Notebooks (a sort of diary), using up tissues.

In a funny sort of way, I think that realisation may help me to throw off the pain. It may be a sort of turning point. I hope so, anyway.

And at the risk of sounding crass, I thought I might link all that to the slow emergence of spring, another turning point, as evidenced by the following pictures.

Rooks' nests by the canal

The weeping willow over the lane below the house, always the first tree to burst into leaf

Ivy berries, like bunches of grapes, important food for birds at this time of year

Beech flowers

I've never noticed beech flowers before (in all my 70 years), which shocks me. How much else is there that I just don't see? Putting that in a more positive way (and I do try to be positive in everything), it shows that nature is always there to surprise and delight us - if we keep open to the possibility.

*This is how one ex-student described Frog in the tribute programme (at least, I think that's what he said)

Wild daffodils

Since Frog died a year and a bit ago, I’ve not watched or listened to The News. (I only followed it when he was alive because he did.) It’s too depressing and I think it’s designed to keep us scared and grateful. Those in charge (at the moment) don’t want us to be happy because then we might start thinking for ourselves and discover that we don’t need them after all.

Recently I’ve found myself less and less inclined to venture out and meet The World. I want to stay in my nice safe house and garden or, even better, cocooned in my duvet. A couple of days ago I realised that this is because I’m frightened. I have this idea of the world and I don’t like it. I’ve lost Frog, my buffer between me and the world. I’m ‘alone and naked in the dark’ as Frodo said on his way to Mordor.

So then I thought, well, this idea I have of  the world is only an idea. Somehow that horrible mainstream view has seeped into to me in spite of my best efforts. So why don’t I change it? Why don’t I start imagining the world as I want it to be? As I really see it?

And I began to put together a different picture of the world. My picture. And it went something like this.
 
 
My world
 -A place of kindness
-A place of meaning
-Somewhere I have a future (even female and at the age of nearly 70)
-Nature (not humans)
-Eternity
-Somewhere I belong and matter and have a place.
 
I might elaborate on those points in the future, but I hope each of them makes enough sense for the moment.
 
None of them accords with the mainstream view or that put across by the media, and you might think I’m deluded or flaky or worse. But what the hell? If I can’t stick my neck out at nearly 70, when can I? If it helps, why not believe?
 

A couple of days ago I was driving to fetch my sister off the train from London. She was coming to stay with me for a few days. I thought I’d left plenty of time but after a long diversion around a new housing estate in the process of being built and the discovery that my shortcut across country was closed (no reason given), I began to feel slightly panicky.
 
I had no proper map, I didn’t want to go miles round to get to the station and I haven’t yet got the hang of the sat nav (which was Frog’s baby). That panic is becoming rather too familiar. It happens every time I have to do something that Frog used to do.
 
Anyway, I headed across country by a different route, with no clear idea of where I was going except a couple of village names, my not unreasonable sense of direction and a compass.
 
According to my new world view, I thought, there would be no need for panic. I would be going this way for a reason. And if I kept my eyes and ears open, I would discover what it was.
 
And then I saw it. A bank of wild daffodils stretching as far as I could see alongside the road.
 
I haven’t seen wild daffodils in Devon since the 1970s, when there used to be meadows of them. They’re different from the cultivated ones you see growing wild - smaller and paler and much more subtle. They’re what Wordsworth saw. And when you see them, you just know they’re special.
 
I stopped in the middle of the lane, hoping some monstrous farm vehicle wouldn’t charge round the corner (as they do) and slam into the back of me, put my hazard flashers on, and took some pictures out of the car window.
 
And here they are. My proof.
 

 
And, yes, I did make it to the station in time. The shortcut proved every bit as good as my usual one. I might take it again.

The lonely duck

Since Frog died just over a year ago, my life has been non-stop. A few days ago, however, I decided that I just had to step off the treadmill. I was exhausted. I’d had back and leg pain since November which stopped me sleeping. I couldn’t go on any longer. I would take March off.

On Saturday, I awoke after a good night’s sleep and decided that the dog and I would go out for the day, even though I had no one to go out with. Like rest, being on my own was part of the process, part of my experiment.

We arrived early. It was cloudy and still. There was hardly anyone else about.

Our first encounter was this cat, who taunted Ellie from the other side of the canal. She knew Ellie couldn’t get at her, and Ellie knew that too, but it didn’t stop barking at it for a good five minutes – as if that would encourage the cat to cross the canal and let Ellie attack it. (She does that with squirrels too, standing at the bottom of trees, and with rabbits, sticking her nose down the entrances to their warrens.)

 

Then we saw this duck. I think it’s a Muscovy, perhaps a young one as the pictures on Google showed black and white feathers not the grey and white ones here. The red cheek is very distinctive however, as are the flat flappy feet, the colour and texture of autumn leaves.

 

I felt sorry for it. It wasn’t frightened of me when I took a photograph and it seemed to be looking for company.

We passed this sign and I wondered if I should have one in my garden. It’s such a good excuse.

 

I walked on and because my mind was empty, because I’d ‘taken March off’, because this was a day out, not only did I notice things but ideas – mainly about writing – flooded in.

That’s the lovely thing about a canal. It’s hypnotic and soothing. You don’t have to negotiate ups and downs. You don’t have to worry about where you’re going. The path stretches out in front of you, unmistakable, as does the water.

After an hour so, we turned back and, with sun and wind now behind us, everything was different. A lovely view confronted me, a medley of soft greens, blues and pinks. For a moment, I thought I was in the Mediterranean.

 

Spot the dog

This mallard pair, almost invisible on the opposite bank, stood motionless above their reflections as Ellie and I walked by. I’ve seen them there before, on their log.

 

We came across the duck again, further up the canal, trying to make friends with another mallard pair. It looked so sad. I really hoped for the best for it. Maybe next time I visited the canal it would have found others of its kind.

Talking of Time

Unsurprisingly,* I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Life and Death.

Yesterday, as I sat on the hill, trying to work out what Life and Death were and how to explain the connection between them, I suddenly had the idea that this life – the one made up of physical matter and Time – is like travel, whereas Eternity is our home.

As I’ve said before, I do believe from both direct experience and because it makes so much sense, that we live more than one life. Through our lives we learn and develop our spirit. In between lives we return to where we came from – Eternity. Life therefore is a sort of gap year and Death is simply the journey home.

I liked that.

And talking of Time, on Sunday I went for a walk with my friend C, her dog Darcy (aka Bert) and my dog Ellie. We climbed a path new to me, called Armour Lane because of its connections with the Civil War.

Armour Lane, with C, Darcy/Bert (the small black dog in the distance) and Ellie (the fluffy black-and-white dog

(The distortion on the left of the picture is I think caused by me putting my finger over part of the lens by mistake. Oh dear.)

On the way up we passed Armour Wood, also named after its connection with the Civil War.

Armour Wood

Unfortunately the wood is privately owned and not open to the public so this is all we saw of it

Near the top we paused to look at Parliament Cottage, so named because the Parliamentarians used it as a base - but for how long or how many times, C didn't know.

Parliament Cottage

At the top, there were views all the way to the coast.

The views from the top of Armour Lane

C showed me this sign designating the track a County Road (And, yes, my picture is the right way up. The sign is pointing back down the path.)

County Road sign

What a County Road is, I have yet to find out (Google not being any help) but C says Armour Lane was once a major route, and W G Hoskins (in his classic book The Making of the English Landscape) says that many long-distance paths date back to prehistoric times.

Nor did Google help me with any of my other questions about the area and its past.

It always amazes – and pleases me – that there is still so much to discover about our history and countryside.

*given that Frog, my husband of 44 years, died suddenly of a heart attack last year, aged only 69

February is the cruellest month

T S Eliot in The Waste Land says that April is the cruellest month and I’ve always agreed with him, finding the mixture of winter’s torpor and spring’s stirrings almost unbearable at times, particularly when I was in my early twenties and so lost and confused.
 
Then I met Frog and for forty-four years he propped me up. Now I’m on my own again and returning to that difficult time, learning all the lessons that I didn’t learn then.
 
Yesterday I took refuge in My Secret Wood. I haven’t been there for a while because it’s dark and damp over the winter. I had one of my migraines and couldn’t manage any of my usual prayers and affirmations and spiritual musings. So I just sat there, on the ground, and Ellie sat with me, twitching her nose. Luckily, now she’s twelve and a half, she doesn’t need to rush around all the time.
 
The first bluebell leaves were pushing through and I realised that it’s now February that’s cruel. With climate change, spring starts two months earlier. And, with the start of spring, comes the conflict between old and new.

I know from experience that I feel closest to Frog when I accept - even welcome - my current circumstances and the fact that he's gone to another place, wherever and whatever it is. But it's hard to let go of my grief. It's almost like an illness that has to run its course.

People say that the grief never goes. Instead, you build a new life around it; you get better at dealing with it.

Spring comes in fits and starts, and so does recovery, I suppose.

My Secret Wood

The first bluebell leaves on the floor of My Secret Wood

What I noticed

 Here is what I noticed on my walk this afternoon.

The entrance to a gnome house?

Another little house, which lives in . . .

. . . this self-sufficiency village 

What a poet friend once called a 'selvedge' of light on the horizon

One of the many celandines that have started popping up in the last week. Welcome to you all, oh harbingers of spring!

I also noticed a hawthorn tree covered in leaf shoots and my favourite acid yellow lichen, but it was right at the beginning of the walk and I didn't think it was important to photograph them because I didn't yet have the idea for this post. It turned out that I should have. Let that be a lesson to me to listen to my instincts.

So much beauty

Even though this is a tough time of year, there’s still so much beauty to be found – and especially so with the recent fine weather.

  
Here (below) is a magnificent oak. I love tree skeletons just as much as trees in full leaf, if not more so. 

(As so often, my world is tilted. Usually I correct the pictures, but I didn't notice this one until I'd uploaded it and now I can't be bothered to change it.)

I adore the bluey greys of this view. They make me want to be a watercolourist – but I had fun nonetheless with my new smartphone camera trying to capture the exact shade of light and dark as I saw it (as advised by Carol of Life of Pottering).

For some reason these distant hills remind me of Lord of the Rings, and the little hobbits trudging through vast swathes of wild countryside. I think it’s because Frog had a Tolkien map or perhaps some pictures that looked like this – I must try and find it/them.|

 

This is My Secret Wood from the outside – a glorious multi-hued tangle, soon to burst with new life.

This is the road that meanders along the ridge of the hill behind the house. Round every corner is a fabulous view. Here are the three beech trees in a line that I’ve mentioned before.

And, just in case you think that winter is a drab time, here is some lichen that leapt out of the hedge at me in a psychedelic way.