S2E15 Beyond The North Wind Chapter 15

Anna continues her trek and reaches the glacier where she will meet her guide. She watches four teenagers play near around a dangerous moulin, a vertical shaft taking meltwater from the surface of the glacier to the bottom.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Beyond the North Wind Chapter fifteen After an hour's walking Anna's pace had slowed again. She stopped to find some bilberries and blueberries to nibble on. Every time a sheep jinked out of the way and its bell tinkled with the trudge of her feet on the track, her thoughts turned to Gunnar. The terrain rose higher and the leaves on the bilberries turned red. In one spot of low growing bushes she was delighted to find some clownberries, yellow fruits like raspberries but with larger sacks and only a tinge of red at the top. She popped a few in her mouth. They tasted like apricots, or, as she liked to think, the sun. Now the way ahead changed. She smelt the mountain grasses and a fragrance like thyme drifted across her path. Grouse dappled in grey and white watched her pass, hidden in the colour of the rocks, their hooting like laughter. What appeared to be tufts of sheep's wool caught on flowers were cotton plants growing on the plain. She stood still and listened to the birds, the sun on her face. In the silence she heard water melting from the glacier. There would be a stream soon and then a river. She moved on, following the path which began to wind upwards around the valley wall. The path narrowed at points, and she had to hold on to the rock face to keep her footing. The sound of rushing water grew louder, the cool air turned moist. Soon water was running past her feet. She found a shallow place and waded across, keeping her balance with her stick. When she was across she was pleased to find her boots were still dry, and she carried on upstream, the river growing beside her in speed and whiteness. It marked the way ahead. The point of her walking stick found the firm ground and set off. Sometime later she found old horse tracks that lost their shape quickly when interrogated with her walking stick. She carried on, feeling the tightness return to the backs of her legs. Her face was hot, so she drank from her water bottle and told herself off for being weak. Plenty of women her age walked or skied these distances, and she needed to shape up. She imagined her face was glowing red like the fire she had lit under Gunner. She winced at the image. The flames had not lasted long. She was blanking the memory of a big sack full of white powder that came next. The whiteness of the mountains pulsed with the unexpected heat of the sun. She tipped some lotion onto her head and rubbed it into her skin. Her mobile phone had reception. She was not completely alone. Moreover she had a clue to Emil's disappearance, if not an actual lead. No one had ever mentioned a villa full of sun loving philosophers before. The ground now became broken, split into rocks strewn like debris across the grass or sunk into dips where lakes reflected the sky like mirrors. At this altitude the mountain ranges looked like islands strung out in a chain, snow and ice merging into mist and fog, touching the white clouds in the bright blue sky. The lake widened, rocky piers grew out into its depths, and a road appeared on her right, running along the water's edge. Beyond the lake the glacier glistened on top of the mountain like white paint spilt into a bowl. The horse tracks disappeared at the road's edge. She followed the tarmac lined with high poles until a sign directed her off the path towards the glacier's arm. The light from the low sun faded, and the sky became darker. The air misty, as she crunched over small stones and walked around giant boulders. She was walking back in time, chasing the path along which the glacier had crawled thousands of years ago. Her stick poked at rough markings in the brown ground, scraped clean of vegetation by the retreating ice. She walked on for a hundred meters, over clear, flat, gouged land, small rivers meeting her path, their dirty whiteness melting into the lake behind her. The way ahead ascended gradually, and Anna noticed her breathing grew noisy. She looked up and saw a finger of the glacier creep over the rock and hang in blue and white, enticing her forward. Her path was well worn, and she assumed she was on the path up towards the glacier. Crushed and cracked rocks marked the edge of the glacier's slow slide, dirty rocks, browns and blacks, broken into pieces where the glacier had crawled. Then the rocks became smaller, more whites than browns, in beds washed clean by the foaming river water, and soon all the way ahead was white. And then quite suddenly the edge of the lake returned, and she stood at the tip of the glacier's tongue, beneath an ice wall stretching meters above her. It looked like a giant bear's paw with fingers and nails. She patted the ice with her gloved hand. A giant she thought, as in the tales of old. She investigated the deep inky blue wells in the icy creases and holes. She had not been on a glacier for years and had forgotten the depth of blue, shades from the colour of duck eggs to dense indigo. Sitting down on her mat she fixed crampons over her boots and tied them on. The metal teeth that gripped the ice gave her confidence to climb up a shallow slope onto the glacier. There were certain places to enter a glacier with safety. One had to find the correct arm to cross on, one without crevasses. She climbed up on the ice, her gloved hands giving her purchase. After a few steps the feeling of walking on ice came back to her. Water ran on the surface which crunched under her crampons but did not trouble the metal teeth of her shoes. When draughts of hot air gusted off the ice, the thermal currents brought back memories of heights with a meal. There was no sign of her guide or anyone else. She sat down on a red mat and unpacked Thomas' sandwiches, salami and cucumber in one, pickled herring and egg in another, an apple and banana in the bag too. The kindness of strangers, she thought. She liked the idea, but was glad she was getting away. Fritchard had tried to be a good friend to her, but he was too conventional for her tastes. Where was the freedom of human expression she saw in the school children's play? Why did everyone have to fit in? What about the eccentrics? To disperse into the wilds was her want, her nature, and she could not quell the need to get away. Tumbling waterfalls pouted silvery tracks of water down the mountain sides above her. She likened them to snail's trails. In the distance ahead and above her, the plain of white ice stretched away towards the peaks of Sturfell and Litfriel. There were many dangers, small crevices with beguiling blue walls and deep bottoms, easy to step over if you were awake, and easy to step into if you were asleep. Folds in the ice threw up stairways to walk on if you watched your step. When she heard feet crunch on the ice she stood expecting her guide, but the first body turned into two, and then became a group of four teenagers, jolly youngsters who danced around the boreholes, the mulins that dropped tens of meters to the very bottom of the ice. Anna tensed when the kids looked into these holes. They were death traps that could take a person to the bottom of the glacier and keep them there for a lifetime, returning the body a hundred years later, if at all. But the teenagers were careful. They waved at her, and she waved back. The kids moved on to an ice corridor, shrieking as they squeezed between two blue ice walls, as they became, temporarily, the ice cubes in an ice cube maker. Then they settled down on the rim of a bowl, looking down the glacier, and pulled out their lunch. She made a quick inventory of her equipment. She wore sunglasses, sun cream, ear protection from the wind. A nutritious lunch had been consumed. There was chocolate and raisins as an emergency ration. The children, two teenage boys sprouting wild hair on their heads, two teenage girls with hair and buns, wore normal clothes, boots but no crampons, and were unprotected from the sun, in t shirts and coats open to the elements. Between them they shared sandwiches out of plastic packets. She waved and got their attention, holding up an offer of her water bottle. They waved back and held up cans of Coca Cola. The colour of the ice brightened when she took off her sunglasses. Her world became more real and dirtier in its details. A black oily residue like dirt or pollution of some kind covered the large ice crystals, full of air, which crunched and split under crampons. She rubbed some of the dirt between her fingers, it stained them back. The remains of animals dead for millennia, giving a grey and black crust to the ice, which cleared as she looked deeper and then became amazing shades of blue. The glacier stretched away into the distance, its gleaming slopes climbing higher towards the sky. Emile, she thought, if you are out there, try and make it a little easier for me to find you.