for research, inspiration, and enjoyment

In the last episode of Master’s of the Air, handsome brave and playful Americans (at their best) deliver food—the first fresh fruit in years—to the starving Dutch. The Americans made these deliveries while answering a call that would always entail going through something like hell. The Dutch ate their oranges from heaven and arranged their tulips in gratitude after years of having always given the last bit of bread to the children. Tawney’s grandfather, Mac Hughes (1916-2009), was among the American pilots flying above Europe in those years, while Jack’s grandmother, Marrianne Aarnas (née Koch, 1924-2017), was among the Dutch students marveling at what the allied planes dropped when they stopped dropping bombs. Three quarters of a century later, on September 14, 2020, Tawney and Jack met in Missoula, Montana. Jack sped down a gravelly driveway on a burgundy road bike bought from craigslist, having sold his 96 volvo station wagon for a pittance a year earlier when moving from Missoula to DC, expecting never to return. He found a beautiful, fiery, driven, and intensely (sometimes chaotically) curious young woman with hair that provided its own sun standing beside a burnt orange 1977 VW bus he would later learn was named Ginger. They walked along the Clark Fork from the defunct redbrick train station in the clear cool light that washes through the Missoula valley when the summer smoke has left for good, and Tawney told Jack, “You're the only person I’ve met who lives more inside their own head than I do.” They would spend the next two nights in each other's company and have their first kiss beside Ginger’s generous and joyful and sometimes broken-down optimism and the murmur of Rattlesnake Creek, which they now listen to from just outside their back door.

We travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more…. And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end. – Pico Iyer 1. Pelicans surround you. You and the sun in impossible rebirth. The moon adrift with purpose in a sky the same color as the swimsuit from Target. We left Casa Luna and the soap tray I broke killing the cockroach and the new safe delivered for the privacy and protection of future inhabitants. After walking hand in hand past charming vultures astride the day’s familiar catch you were alone again, as you sometimes will be in our own bed and even when I’m in it too. Looking on, of course I didn’t know whether you were trying to remember or trying to forget. Though while embraced by the ocean, perhaps neither. Were you gathering something for the path ahead? For its continual arising and disappearance? Or merely trying to feel your breath, and the sea where it wet your thigh? (I think you went in just so far to tempt me.) In this gentle surf I wonder if the three pelicans at rest are more curious about you than I am, and if their curiosity holds something more honest than mine? I must learn from the grace of their rest, from the way their beak and neck cleave in such simplicity enfolding a past and future flight it is hard to believe yet harder to deny. You see how much time I must set aside for proper study! We didn’t know all of this was taking place in front of a scientist dedicated to possibility and integration. Grateful the intellect that marveled at his holiness cavorting with janitors to the chagrin of the secret service would train his lens on us. Grateful for all the lenses and kindnesses we still feel unworthy of— Should I ask the pelicans for another lesson?

Mother’s cousin drove us to the Oslo central station before dawn. No one hinted that it would be a grueling ride. Or no one openly hinted. Certainly nothing in the laughter around the crowded table the previous evening had suggested it, nor the summer strawberries for dessert. No one knew except yourself you had never ridden a mountain bike. The train left the city so quickly and so quickly we settled into love for adventure and adventure for love. Five hours of steel on steel later the man renting bikes told us it would be alright if we did not return them by closing—that was the first sign of how demanding it would all become, that and the e-bikes we never considered. There was no pacing you, stopping only to shed another layer. The perfectly neat cabins with enough stacked wood for two winters and the long Norwegian flags like the 4th of July’s most wholesome dream all spoke of safety amidst wilderness— a most cherished combination, and there is no stopping you when you are safely and nakedly moving through wilderness. Yet while maps are bridges across rivers we could never swim they also deceive—the ones handed down, the ones we drew with colored pencils, certainly the ones in our phones. Our map on this day failed to account for the weight on our shoulders the lure of a single sheltered perspective with hot cocoa and the rocks in the path. There was no map to communicate the beautiful desolation the unforgiving stone the pain in your ass and how the water always falls from the top of the world. As each barren ridge gave way to yet another climb, and the hoped for promised horizon failed to appear it was only right to scream. Thank goodness for PB+J and the 8-year old girl zooming past in delight. The sleet that threatened to halt us completely never quite erupted, and the landscape again began to thrive. Flowers beside the road, lakes beyond flowers, the road obeying the earth. Finally we hit pavement and you prayed while the valley that was our destination prayed too. Something ancient whispered in that place. Our ancestors lived and died close by. “I would marry you there,” you said, gliding past the church whose foundations were moved by fairies, and whose walls were adorned not by saints, but by animals and trees. The pub had drummers from the past and singers in war paint, but no open tables. So dinner was reindeer sausage and potato chips from the Mall of Norway. We slept in separate bunk beds and you were too tired to complain of distance between dreaming. In the morning I left you sleeping with a sheepskin and walked to the village with a bike in each hand. Amidst sun, forest, farm, river, and school I knew I would ask you to marry me. I knew another chapter of our story would begin here. Where salmon thread the dark streams of reflected stars with cargoes of crystal water. Where young salmon are blessed with hunger for a great journey on a drawing tide. With a cup of coffee in an empty shop I met Esther. She had scars on her arms that proved she ain’t seen what she wants to yet. “This place is elemental,” she told me, and helped me choose your ring. We decided between earth and water. She asked me what kind of energy you bring to the world—fire—and we agreed best to ground your passion, rather than risk extinguishing it. 6 eggs and a cardamom bun in hand, I returned to find you scolding me for being gone too long. “We should go for a walk before the ferry,” I said. “I’d rather read in a coffee shop,” you said, refusing a walk for the first time since I had met you. “Just a short one,” I said, “to the church we passed yesterday.” Thank God you said yes.