Somewhere Over the Sea by Halfdan Freihow

much space that even grief and joy become small and confused. I see how the open, exposed surroundings suit you, how you seamlessly fit yourself into the landscape, how it’s yours. And I see how this context is also ours — father and son and dog on board a boat on its way out to sea. There’s something timeless about this scene, something almost archetypal, which makes it profoundly reconciliatory.
    THE LINE OF SKERRIES outside our island isn’t very long, but in compensation the good Lord has taken great pains with it. Even with only four weary horsepowers at our disposal we are within reach of bay, cliffs, islets, and points for every occasion, every prevailing wind, every angle of sunshine. But since the wind out here often blows from the north, and the sun is in the south during the daytime, we’ve developed the habit of choosing the smooth slopes of a little island some fifteen minutes away sailing southwest. At the back is a bluff that provides shelter from the wind, and in front it stretches out hungrily toward the open sea in the south.
    That’s where we’re heading now. Apart from a couple of fishing boats there isn’t a vessel in sight and therefore no people either. It’s the way things usually are: as well as being paradisal — or perhaps precisely for that reason — the islands are blessedly free of people. At least those who haunt other coastlines with their noise, their engine power, and their incomprehensible haste.
    On days like this the smooth rocky slopes are a dream, but they’re no place to be when the wind suddenly turns and, for the sake of variety — or to spite the meteorologists — sends in storm troopers from the south. Then the waves bite their way onto the rocks in great mouthfuls and toss the boat ashore, and the wind whips away everything that isn’t bolted down or held fast. Then the main force arrives, a black wall of sky that first appears low on the horizon and, before we’ve had time to ask each other if this can be true, it is towering above us in biblical dimensions and hurling down its heaviest ammunition.
    Ha! I think, and picture to myself scenes of soaked discontent in charming Lillesand. For here the sun is beaming in the middle of October itself, and the sea splashes and smiles, and the wind is so apathetic it scarcely raises a flap.
    THE BOAT IS MOORED , equipment and provisions carried ashore. Balder has caught the scent of something and is away over the hills. I busy myself with blankets and food, restore the little barbecue pit that wind, water, or vandals have ruined since our last visit. You stand there and watch in almost complete silence. I get undressed. The heat is Mediterranean and the body needs to store sunlight before the night of winter comes to claim us. I make myself comfortable on the blanket, light a cigarette and pour a glass of wine. I ask if you’re hungry. I’ll start the food shortly, just want to sit a little first and enjoy the sun. Do you want a glass of juice?
    Each time I say, almost word for word, the same things. They’re obvious things, but they have a liberating effect on you. You look around as though inspecting the site and you don’t find anything that is incomplete or unusual, anything that isn’t the way it usually is and therefore shouldn’t be. You reply either “Yes please,” or “No, I’ll wait till later.” And just that, simply the fact that you feel free and secure enough to choose your own answer, to follow your own inclination, to decide about your own thirst, tells me that you are ready. You are done with occupying the site, done with clearing it, accepting its restrictions and possibilities. Now you are here and could, if I were to ­suggest it, stay until next week.
    How many times have we been here? A hundred? Two hundred? A thousand times? And yet each time you have to go through this laborious