Do you believe in coincidence? Or is coincidence just the watered-down way we refer to the obvious but unexplainable occurrences of fate? Or am I somehow just a magnet for the slightly off, overly enthusiastic, and generally not-so-attractive portion of the male population? That all sounds a bit harsh, considering today's ending was far from charity on my account. But you have to admit, either the world is a lot smaller than you and I think, or somebody up there likes toying with me.The day started off slowly enough. And I didn't mind. My body was still recuperating from whatever cold I had last picked up, and I was in no hurry to go anywhere, as the unseasonably rainy weather seemed frozen as if at gunpoint in the murky skies the seemed to stretch from one side of Norway to the other. Bergen I understood. Bergen is supposed to get a lot of rain. But Flåm?
According to the young girl who emptied my trash can and tidied up the ruffled bedsheets yesterday, Flam was supposedly the 6th driest place in the world (I find that a bit hard to believe, seeing as how there are more than six deserts in the world, and I?m pretty sure they get less rain than Flam, even in a good year? but maybe I misunderstood her. Maybe that was supposed to be the 6th wettest place in the world. Whatever. Does it matter? It didn't change the forecast any).By 11 AM I managed to be at the reception to check out, and dropped off my bag in their storage room so I could wander around a bit and at least feel like I had made an attempt to see the place. For the moment, at least, the rain was at bay, and as I walked uphill toward the face of an impressive waterfall, I swear I saw the little pocket of blue sky peek through. Like someone had taken hold of the corner of a notebook page, and ripped it away to expose the sheet underneath. Come on, you can do it! I shouted to the skies. I just knew that any minute, that crack in the clouds was going to grow bigger and bigger, splitting open wider and wider until the blue sky pushed its way in. But it didn?t happen. In fact, things got worse.
Less than an hour later, I was done with my abbreviated hike, and lounging around the Tourist Office, trying to make up my mind whether to take the blasted Næroyfjorden cruise I had had my heart set on for so many weeks now, or save a couple bucks and just take the train back to Myrdal, seeing as how the forecast just given to me by the cheerful desk attendant was that the weather was only going downhill from here. I kept thinking that maybe if I kept asking God for a teeny weeny little miracle, He might grant me even just a few minutes of blue skies during that ferry crossing to Gudvangen. So I bought the ferry ticket. Because it was worth at least trying, you know?The voyage started out fine enough. I scored a seat on the top deck, facing north along the fjord, and settled into the flimsy plastic chair that would be mine for the next hour and fifty minutes. I enjoyed some solitude and tried to ease myself into the mindset that, rain or no rain, this was an experience I was going to absolutely savor, until three minutes later, the seat next to me was taken and I had to kiss my solitude goodbye.
Her name was Mary Kay and, despite the fact that she was a middle-aged mother of two on-the-cusp-of-adulthood sons, she had more energy, pep, and zest for adventure than most women I know. Period. I listened to her talk, rattling on about her pilot's license and work with Angel's Wings, her 18-year-old niece whom she recently drove to a tattoo parlor, her husband -- stuck in Lillehammer for the day to deliver a presentation, who she kept trying to encourage to take more risks. (No doubt he was having a difficult time keeping up with her!)
As
the wind -- and our ferry -- picked up speed, and the temperatures dropped, she disappeared and then returned with two steaming cups of herbal tea and some kind of sweet Norwegian filled bread that she had picked up for us to munch on. And as she kept talking, I realized that as different as she and I were, we shared this massive love for the adventure of travel. The being-out-there-and-doing-it kind. In some faraway place. With the freedom to stay and stay and stay. Not your package-tour kind of woman, neither of us. And it was so refreshing. There was something in her so alive, and I thought, yeah, I can hold onto this love. I don't have to let it die, ever. Look at this woman, as full of youth as if she just fell out of grade school. You would never know, looking at her, she was a survivor of brain cancer, or that just a few years ago she decided she was going to learn how to fly planes. It just made me realize that we all come in different packages, and that there is no way of knowing, if you don't take the time to peel off a few layers, what ties, dreams, similarities, passions you might share with the stranger standing right next to you.... (to be continued)~Melanie
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