afieldnotebook

Last week I was talking to some Norwegians when I whipped out my phone to share pictures. I don't have a Norwegian SIM card (thanks, AT&T and SaskTel for my locked phones, really appreciate that) so my telephone is basically a game-playing and picture-sharing device. Most of the picture-sharing involves pictures of my cranes, because my cranes are one (perhaps the only) goofy facet of my life for which people request photographic evidence (didn't I predict that cranes would become my wallet pictures? I'm pretty sure smartphones are the new version of wallet photographs). But there are some pictures of home on there, too, and when those came up I said, "Look! That's where I from!" because I take endless delight in sharing photographs (hence this blog).

"But where are the people?" asked the guy holding my phone.

"They're in the valley," I said.

It occurs to me now that he may've been wondering where the pictures of my family were; I'm genuinely not sure. If that's the case, my family was probably behind me. But the people--the people were in the valley, for the most part. That's where people congregate, isn't it? In valleys, along  rivers.

Still, the question and my interpretation of it revealed my own bias for the illusion of wilderness; so many of the pictures I've posted here since I returned to Norway have been of the mountains, not the valley (or, in Tromsø's case, the island, but compared to the mountains Tromsøya is low and flat and may as well be the valley). After all, I spend most of my time here, with people, and peaks only a distant silhouette.