Going North

I sat backwards on the train for nine and a half hours from Trondheim to Bodø. I ate terrible Norwegian chocolate and drank a strangely carbonated apple drink and was perfectly content. I love being places where I do not feel as if I can be expected to be doing anything. I just stare out the window and know that I can fill the time with the magic of my mind.

As we drove the snow fell and stopped and fell again and the soon white was swallowing the world. I saw a man standing next to a truck on a small road. He looked like he was filming the train. Bang! We hit something. The train stopped and backed up, then moved forward again. Strange that the man was filming just at that point. I wondered what the train had hit, and had he put it there in order to film the train, hoping perhaps that it might derail and he could capture the carnage for his personal joyful viewing? I was nearly famous. I was so nearly famous.

Later, just as we were crossing the arctic circle, the train hit a reindeer. Again we stopped and backed up, and this time I saw its crumpled body lying next to the tracks, legs hideously bent. I remember the shades of its fur and also the white snow, but little blood. Its two companions wandered the nearby hillside and it seemed they did not want to leave without the one they did not yet know was dead.

I took a photo of a funny marker that was sticking out of the snow and learned later that it signified the invisible line that says "you are now inside the arctic circle." If the train hadn't struck the reindeer I never would have seen it. And that would have been fine.