afieldnotebook

A couple weeks back I returned to Tromsø, as I've been doing, now, since I arrived a year ago. I leave Tromsø, I come back. The route, even when it wends its way through airports, feels familiar now. I will watch movies between Boston and Keflavik, even when I should be sleeping; I will sleep from Iceland to Oslo, even if should stay awake; I will drink black tea between Oslo and Tromsø, because my sleep schedule is already pretty well shot and they don't have ginger ale.

It's weird to me that I take air travel as a matter of course now, because I've always found the process of picking a person up out of one landscape and dumping them down in the midst of another a bit strange. There may not be much but ocean between Massachusetts and Norway, but my journey erases it and replaces the specific vastness of the Atlantic with the small void of an airplane seat, like any seat on any airplane. And, for all my gripes, I'm grateful for it, because I would not be able to hopscotch so easily between continents otherwise. But my return to Tromsø struck me, not when the plane touched down on a dark afternoon two weeks ago, but when I came out from the mountains this past Sunday. It's strange for me to be rounding a year here, to cross familiar landscapes in familiar seasons. Maybe--probably--it shouldn't be. On the other hand, one year ago I came to Norway for sixth months, and if I'm still here twelve months later, there's something a bit odd going on. Or I am very poor at planning (truth).

All I can say is that it's nice to be settled for a time, to come back. I'm looking forward, now, and towards other places, but for the time being it's good to be back in Tromsø, where life is cold and dark and--strangest of all--familiar.