Nor-WOW

Not really anything more to say, is there?

Except maybe this:

Bespoke hiking

After all this hiking all over the world, I did not expect that the home stretch would present me with a trail that seems to have been built just for me.  

Dig if you will the picture:  an obstacle course for grown-ups, and if you complete all the obstacles, your prize is: a glacier!  That's what the hike to Buarbreen Glacier, in Folgefanna National Park, felt like to me.

Let's survey our slate of challenges!

There's the part where the trail crosses a river:

And then a bigger river....:

And then the part where the trail just is the river:

There's the chained section:

And the ropes and ladders course:

And whatever this half-assed eagle scout project is: 

There's this bridge over raging water held together by a single thin, frayed rope: 

And some extended scrambling:

And also a couple of legit bouldering problems:

And then, at the top:  wowza!  Blue ice!  

I love this hike so much.  I was laughing pretty much the whole couple miles of ascent, and then the whole time back down again.  I have done many, many longer hikes and harder hikes and more dangerous hikes in my time, but I don't think I've ever had as much pure fun on a hike.  Thanks, Norway, for designing a trail with me in mind!

It's 3:00am and still light outside...

Hello, Norway! I see that you have worn your most impressive livery to greet me!  

Back on my own again for this last stretch of travel.  When the boys flew back to the US, I flew north and east to Norway.   

This landscape is a fabulous Tolkein elf-world.  All dramatic plunges from rocky heights into blue water, and everything covered by thick green forests.  From the city center in Bergen, it takes about 10 minutes to hike up into the canopy, and maybe 45 to get up to overlook level, whence to access hundreds of miles of hiking paths, which wander around small lakes and into mossy woods.  And have I mentioned the waterfalls?  Because they're everywhere.  Like, you can't go a mile without passing some torrent or another frothing down from the black ridges overhead.  

And I note immediately upon arrival that this is perhaps the one place along my travels where I do not stand out at all, for here all the lanky, pale folk are just striding around the steeps waiting for XC ski season (ahem: nordic ski season) to begin.  Everyone begins by addressing me in Norwegian, only switching to English when I return their familiar addresses with a blank stare.  That never happened in Uzbekistan.

Cool, cool summer weather with lots of clouds and rain.  Abundant fruit and a weirdly strong burrito culture, to my surprise.  And, of course, all the outdoors.  Norway, I think we've found ourselves a love connection!

Museum stamina

One of the things that I think is really cool about my kids is their capacity to close a museum.  Most of the time when we visit a museum, we arrive roughly at opening time and are the last ones to get kicked out at the end of the day.  These humans of mine love to read an informational plaque, love to discern the narrative of a room, and love to leave with a few favorite knowledge-parcels in their pockets.  

Here are some of the highlights from several days together in London museums:

 [A 45000-year-old woolly rhino, preserved so well in a natural oil seep that its skin and flesh are still present / Natural History Museum]

[First x-ray machine, made by Wilhelm Rontgen, 1896 / Science Museum]

[Canopic jars - organ storage to accompany Egyptian mummies in their tombs / British Museum]

[15-inch naval guns, with E for scale / Imperial War Museum]

[A Bristol Beaufort, WW2 bomber / RAF Museum Hendon]

Mixing business and pleasure

During this stretch in England, I've also had the opportunity to do some work related to my current research on 16th- and 17th-century poetry.  I have hung out with manuscripts at the Wren Library in Trinity College, Cambridge, and in the British Library.  Here are a couple of cool photos of old texts:

In Cambridge, I got permission to have E spend some time in the Wren with me, where I was able to request for him some suitable 17th-century reading material to occupy his attention while I was reading psalters.

I was also granted permission to visit Penshurst, that great pile in Kent--the subject of Ben Jonson's poem and the late 16th-century HQ for the Sidney-Herbert Circle.  The family that lives in the house now is the same family that has occupied the house for nineteen generations. (Not the exact same humans, obv. They're not vampires.)  And they still have the family books in the family library, which is perhaps to be expected, but it's pretty cool when the family tree includes Philip Sidney, Mary Sidney Herbert, and Mary Wroth, among others.  I dearly wish that I could post some photos of the sublime manuscript (each letter ornamented with gold) that I went there to examine, but photos were not allowed.  So instead, I offer here a couple of pictures of Penshurst, witness to both a lot of history and a significant chunk of literary history, to which I came as a kind of pilgrim.  

[NBD just one of the family portraits on the wall: my girl Mary Sidney Herbert]

I feel very fortunate indeed that my professional life gives me so much intellectual and aesthetic joy.  There are so many ways to be filled with wonder in this world--in the realms of business and pleasure both.

Les enfants des avions

The conceptual centerpiece of E's high school graduation trip:  the 55th biennial Paris Air Show.  Because we simply have not seen enough planes over the last couple of weeks.  And because this aerospace extravaganza, which takes place every other year, is the largest such gathering in the world.  So naturally, it's where E wants to be.  

Here follows some of what we spotted in the wild:

The Patrouille Acrobatique de France (like the French Blue Angels or Thunderbirds) doing their air ballet thing in Alpha Jets:

Super impressive A400, which in flight did maneuvers no cargo plane should be doing:

A Dassault Rafale fighter jet, painted in the French tricolore:

And here we are, with a small portion of 500,000 of our closest amis:

One kid looks up, the other kid looks down

B has joined us!  Which means that we are supplementing our air-and-space tourism with some paleontological adventures.  We've been digging around in the area of the Jurassic Cliffs, on the south coast of England.  

[A couple of specimens from the fossil museum in Lyme Regis--an ichthyosaur, above, and a HUGE heteromorph ammonite, below]

And I mean "digging around" literally, because there are areas near Lyme Regis where the layperson is welcome to excavate for personal treasures. Some of the fossils are a bit too big to pack into the carry-on luggage....

But some of them are more portable than the giant ammonite above, and we've found ancient life aplenty in the cliffs and along the beaches--belemnites and ammonites primarily.  

It's fantastic for me to be with these guys for a while, and to supplement my endless obsession with mountains with more down-to-earth pursuits. Being with my kids provides its own altitude.