July 15 Delores

 She says her name is Delores.

I break into song and she and he join me, “Dolores! I live in fear. My love for you’s so overpowering, I’m afraid I’ll disappear. Slip sliding away…”

He says, “The acoustics in the tunnels in Norway are amazing; have you tried singing in them?”

He says that he’s thinking of starting a vocal group. “We will meet once a year on our bikes, in the tunnels in Norway and sing together.”

I say, “Count me in.”

She says she is from New Zealand and has been cycling for 18 weeks. She speaks in “I”pronouns. I ask if they are together and she says yes. But as she describes their trip to the Netherlands, down the Rhine, and finally to Inverness, she does not use “we” pronouns. But he does. Is this a sign of independence? A revolt? A fissure?

Once again, pronouns baffle me. I can tell they convey something important, but I can’t decipher what.

They are camping across the way, and point to a small cove with a white beach, protected from the wind that is blowing from the north. They have crossed the street to this stream to get drinking water.

“There are reindeer,” he says. “You can’t see them from here, but we saw them earlier on the beach. We thought, ‘How can we not camp where there are reindeer?’ “

I hope that they will invite me to join them. I want to see the reindeer and I want to get to know these people. But they don’t, so I continue cycling up the road for another hour or two, into the headwind, in search of my own cove.

Claire Morrow, a Louise Penny character, says her fear is, “not realizing when she has found paradise.”

I see a small break in the trees, a vague path heading toward a grassy knoll, beside the fjord. I also do not want to miss paradise and this spot, high above the Arctic Circle, which took so much effort to get to, but could easily be missed by simply riding by that last small turn, may be it.

Another cove for which words are inadequate. Perfect? Magical? Astounding?Awe inspiring? A quiet place beneath the midnight sun.

Here, a small crescent-shaped, white-sand beach, protected from the wind by a copse of trees, a rock worn smooth by the tide on which to cook, looking out at the mountains and the midnight sun as it comes down, contemplates its next move, and rises again.

I make dinner on the rock. I sit in the grass and watch the sun. I listen to the birds. I watch the waves. I climb into my sleeping bag and hope I won’t forget how much I love sleeping in a tent when I’m back home next week.

Later, awake again, I look out my tent at the mountain, and the sun, and the now-calm ocean, and the grasses. I am having trouble sleeping, which is unusual for me.

Because the sun is so bright? Because I’ve had too much caffeine? Because I miss my sister? I wonder if I’ve run out of profound thoughts, even as I’ve almost run out of miles. Each successive day, each successive mile, there have been fewer and fewer thoughts. Maybe it’s time to go home.

And then I hear the whisper, the longing of my heart, the quiet voice that has been here this entire trip but too soft to hear, “I wish I could share this with my child.”

A different line from that Delores song by Paul Simon flits by, “He kissed his boy while he lay sleeping thenhe turned around and headed home again.“

And a tear slides down my cheek.