Thursday 25 January 2001
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Pic of the day: I hope you excuse the big picture today. It's not going to be a habit. It's from my "vacation" on the west coast of Norway, on the farm where I grew up. The big picture
There are those who can never cross Chris de Burgh, Shine On, from the CD Power of Ten. ***I'm looking at a photograph. It seems so long ago already that I took this picture, and yet so short a time ago that I was part of it, a universe ago. All over the place, almost blinking into existence, are small Magnus Itlands, from another time, another reality. Out of sight to the left is the house where I was actually born, and grew up. (For somewhat disputable values of "growing up".) In the foreground is the yard in front of the house. The farm lies in a valley, and the house lies on the slope facing due south. There is a pretty steep drop which you can see as a line, down to the river plain. The river ran through my childhood. I cannot count the hours I spent alongside it, and along the small streams that joined it. The running water fascinated me; perhaps me more than other children, now that I think of it. Beyond the river, the terrain rises gently to the narrow country road. For reasons that are now probably lost in history, the road lies on the south side of the valley. The farmsteads are all on the north side, so they can catch the sun. Most places, the road would run in a line through the farm yards, from house to house. This is indeed so in the rest of the village, including the farms further east (left) in the same valley. There is a stretch of forest between them and us, and for some reason there was never built a road along the straight line from them through our farm to the final farm in the valley, our neighbor to the west. Why? Someone probably still knows. Or perhaps not. Instead, the road runs along on the south side, and each of us neighbors had our own bridge over the river, and our own road up to the house. You can see the old road and a somewhat newer bridge to the left in this picture. Where our road met the village road, the mailbox used to stand. Almost every day there was something in it. My parents and grandparents subscribed to newspapers and magazines, and my mother in particular wrote lots of letters and got many herself. Her mother also was a writer, but the men in the family were not so inclined. I was also an eager letter-writer when I was younger, and I think my brothers were too, but it seems to fade as we grow older. Many years after I left home, I would dream that I came to that mailbox and found mail waiting for me, lots and lots of mail, more than a natural mailbox could hold, mail that had waited for me there for years, waiting for me to come back and fetch it. But the mailbox is long gone. ***Can you see the red building with a black roof by the road? It's our garage. I remember when my father built it. He mixed sand and cement and water and after a few days it had become a rock hard foundation. I was impressed. I was just a boy, and my father could almost perform miracles. Imagine, building a house! I wanted to do that too when I grew up. (Keep dreaming.) Eventually we also got a car to have there, but I think that was years later. You cannot really see it now, but to the left of the garage was a jumble of rocks. I think there must have been some big rock that was blown up sometime in the past, but I cannot remember it. As far back as I can remember, the stones were there. There were tiny ponds where we would find mosquito larvae and, perhaps, tadpoles. There were stone ridges to balance on, and unstable stones to rock back and forth. Many of my earliest childhood memories were from playing there. Usually alone, jumping from stone to stone singing nonsense songs or telling myself nonsense stories. But I also remember playing with the little neighbor girl. She was like 3 or 4 years younger than me, but she was a girl. I have loved girls as long as I can remember; I have no idea how much she is the reason for that. She was certainly fun. But most of the time, I played alone. Beyond the road were the less cultivated pastures, where little was done at that time except applying some fertilizer. The cows spent their summer there and had a good time, I dare say. A small stream ran through it, where I would play. In dry summer weeks, it was nearly nothing, but during rain it would grow. The land around it was marshy, and eventually my father decided to drain it. He bought segments of concrete pipe. Some smaller ones for the upper part of the stream, and some bigger ones for the last stretch, large enough to easily swallow all the water on a rainy autumn day. I am pretty sure those concrete pipes were lying around for years. There was no urgency in these things. There was urgency to get the hay in when rain threatened; to get the goats home before nightfall. But not to drain some perfectly fine marsh. Of course, my extended sense of time may have already kicked in then, but I doubt it. This was around my puberty. I was still very childish, and would spend my time playing if possible. (Some things never change, huh?) I remember that I liked to crawl through those pipes. They were only short segments, just large enough to hold me when I crawled on my hands and knees. Eventually the stretch from just beyond the road and down to the river was dug up with big machines and the concrete pieces fitted together to one long pipe, which was covered over. Ooooh! An underground pipeline! Who could possibly resist? Not me! When the stream was practically dry, I snuck off, telling no one, and traversed the dark tunnell on my elbows and knees. It didn't for a moment strike me that I might get stuck there. Before I was finished, the knees of my trousers were gone. But what an adventure! And what acoustics! To this day, I feel a slight itch whenever I see some of those concrete pipes lying around... It's just so exciting! ***Today the marsh is turned into a green field, as seen on the picture. Beyond that field, the valley side rises to a ridge. Just below the horizon grew a dense patch of spruce. Perhaps you can see it on the picture, it's just to the left of the line that separates our pastures from the forest to the west. The tops rise up to just touch the horizon. The spruce were always there. My grandfather had planted them long ago, I think. Some of them were eventually cut down, but many still remain, though my grandfather is long gone, at an age of over 90. Some new spruce were planted not far from the old ones. I guess in two or three more generations, they will be mature too. In a world where companies are founded, flourish and falter in the course of months, it feels so strange to know that somewhere people plant trees that will be grown in two or three generations. And that some time my brother may be one such great-grandfather who is gone, but whose trees remain, unobtrusive, a part of reality that just is there. I too am descended from that kind of people, but I have forgotten. It's a sorry thing, is it not? That it feels strange, when someone is actually thinking of a profit that is not his own, but his grandchildren's. When someone is thinking of ... the big picture. ***
We've got to learn Chris de Burgh, Shine On. |
Some rain. |
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