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From the windows of my office here you can see down the slope of the island to the docks where cranes unload boats, and on a clear day you can look across the water to mountains whose peaks are so white they sometimes become invisible against the clouds.

It's a pretty good view. And if you look down at the low slopes of the mountains of the mainland you can see where this city has carved out a place for itself, and also where it hasn't: where the hills are steep and inhospitable, their contours sketches out by thin trees before fading into coats of snow. A week ago I went on a trip with the university outing club, and we took the bus to the edge of the town and then skied up into those mountains, to a place where everything was smooth and white. Civilization fades away (and then returns, in the guise of snowmobile tracks and power lines).

And here I am, on a hill in this island city, looking out the window. It's almost four o'clock, and everything's dark blue and gold (I buy milk supplemented with vitamin D now).

There's always a point when I arrive in a new place--new country, new state, new city, new town--and I wonder what I'm doing there, if I should have stayed where I was before. There are benefits to staying, benefits to going, disadvantages to both, and I'm not sure I have the time or inclination to tease them apart right now. Besides, when it comes to Tromsø, the decision's been made. I'm steadily becoming more comfortable here. It's been nearly a month, which comes as something of a shock, but when I consider it it does seem like it's been some time since I boarded that plane in Boston.

If moving around has taught me one thing, it has to do with the character of places. I lived in Saskatoon for nearly a year and a half, and over that time I came to know it, became comfortable with it. And that's a valuable thing--that's one of the reasons I wonder about the wisdom of leaving. But I tugged up my roots and came here anyway, because even though I knew Saskatoon and was comfortable there, I was also dissatisfied with it in ways large and small, and it was a place I had always intended to leave.

My time in Tromsø has an expiry date as well, which is another reason I wonder about why I came here. But being here is such a pleasure, it's hard to spend much time dwelling on that, especially when I could probably spend my time dwelling in this city.

There are some people it is just a pleasure to have met, and known, even if we don't see each other so often any more. I have those people in my life, but I also have cities and towns that fill the same niche. Each one has taught me something, too, about how landscape interacts with culture, and how we, as humans, make places for ourselves in the world. Tromsø, which sits at 69° north (as do I, at the moment), seems like it should be inhospitable. But I walk the streets, past people on kicksleds and skis, bundled toddlers being pulled on sleds and houses with warmly lit windows, and it hardly feels it. But also--it feels like nowhere else I've ever lived, and I'm grateful for that, grateful for another new place that is becoming, in some small way, mine.