It started on an earlier day in mid September. After living in Vermont off and on for the past six years, it was difficult to say good-bye to the place and friends I’d come to know. But my life has moved west gradually over the past several years, attracted by real mountains, awesome weather, and a more urban lifestyle, compared to rural Vermont. Leaving Jericho at 4:30 AM, I drove to the airport as the first hints of light appeared for the day. Leaves had just started to change color and it was a crisp fall morning. The quintessentially perfect day in New England.
Chile is not a well-known country. There was nothing in popular culture, history, or recent news that I could rely upon to inform my presumptions about Chile. Only bits and pieces, from the horrors of the Pinochet regime to the likely beauty of the Andes Mountains, however contaminated by Santiago’s smog, really occupied my mind. But really, it was a clean slate. The only thing I really knew was that I was headed for South America, a place that, in general, I imagined to be poor, but in a rustic kind of way.
Eventually, the roads were cleared and the military received permission to transport us via bus down the switchbacks to the vineyard. A few trucks were still stranded. By the time we reached the bottom of the regulated part of the road – what we’ll call the mountain section, guarded with a gatehouse at the bottom – we noticed that the road was actually still closed for the most part. Besides us, only a few passenger cars and vans from Hotel Portillo were on the road. Truck after truck after truck was waiting to get moving and deliver their goods to Argentina. The truckers eyed us with envy as we passed, this gigantic bus. I think the military uniform of our driver convinced them to limit their envy to their eyes.
I had only budgeted for a week in Beitostølen, but because the snow conditions were great after the World Cup, I decided to stay. After a week in the hotel paying an exorbitant amount of money per night for a room and three meals, I moved to the home of Sigrid Tufte Talle just down the road to save money and live somewhere new.
Last night, the big red train delivered me from Oslo to Geilo. Exhausted from travel and the time change, I collapsed onto the sofa while Anne Marie cooked dinner.
When my plane touched down in Newark on Monday, I was glad to be home in the U.S. Sure, we have our share of problems, but after spending seven weeks in Norway, I can attest to the fact that all countries have them. I’ve been trying to think of a good story to write about Norway, but the truth is that I lived pretty much the same there as I do here. I wake up, eat, train, eat again, sleep, train some more, eat another time, and go to bed. Whether I am in Maine, Norway, or Siberia, my life is pretty much the same.
Tonight, during my evening shooting workout on the range here in Geilo, I saw something that truly made me understand how powerful skiing culture can be. Imagine the following:
Thirty young kids shooting air rifles, with their proud parents looking through shooting scopes behind them watching each shot with as much delight as American parents do watching their kids swing at a baseball.
On Sunday morning, I awoke in the back of my truck to an unbelievable view. Out the rear window were mountains – real mountains, with snow still on their peaks! The sky was blue with only a few streaks of white cirrus clouds. It was rather cold; I shivered at first when I got out of my sleeping bag. After a rather unappetizing bowl of brown rice grits, I packed what I would need for the day and started off down the road to the trailhead.
After taking a day of rest and emptying my truck of everything I own in Fort Kent, I packed it back up with skis, food, water, and a sleeping bag. My destination was a whimsical place in the province Québec on the Gaspé Peninsula, which, like a tongue, juts out into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. I consider myself to be an adventurer, but unfortunately in this age of civilization, most corners of the world have been explored. So what is left for me is to visit as many of those corners as possible doing a lot of cool things along the way.
The past three days have been a blur of driving and flying around the country to find a place that I can start my on-snow skiing. I have traveled from Vermont to Maine, returning to Maine, and finally to Montana, where I am at the moment.
