Part 2: Goes to Sweden
I put Big Ted on the windowsill, gazing out across the deep flat snow towards the tall pines and light blue sky. He was no longer on shark watch, but on moose watch during the day and northern lights watch at night. It was the perfect spot for him, especially as I had seen moose tracks around the house as we arrived; add to that, a dark moon and clear night skies, which gave us a very good chance of an aurora display, Ted had a lot on his plate. However, he liked a challenge and I knew he could be properly relied on, unlike monkeys who would be off at the first chance to frolic in the snow and chase an arctic fox or two behind my back, and then pretend to have kept vigilance when I later checked up on them. Monkeys, eh!
The client had expressed her desire to see the northern lights flicker and dance across a starlit sky somewhere in a frozen wilderness without people, noise or lights. After some searching I found a place up in the Arctic circle, fifty miles from the nearest shop, with a near zero population. All it had was the hissing silence of endless snow and pines.
But there was another thing – she wanted to get fit, walk off the central Asian plov and the stodge that ex-pat office life so easily piles on. She quickly set me straight as I confessed my ignorance to this odd sounding plov: plov is a greasy lamb and rice dish that is so full of fat it glistens. It’s good for frozen lumberjacks and Pamir sheep-herders, but ballooning for the modern world. The danger is – it tastes delicious. Good job I had picked up an extra pair of snowshoes so we could hike and freeze this plov into total submission. Lean times were ahead.
Lean times also meant frugal menus. After we had picked the car up from the small airport, we headed into town for a careful shop at the supermarket. We had to cater for eight days or more – running out or running low on food was not an option I could afford.
Quite frankly, I can’t say that I was looking forward to a near zero calorie diet – I was starving already, but I could hardly eat roast potatoes and melted cheese to keep my oomph and enthusiasm up. That would have been downright cruel as the client munched on frozen carrot and Arctic muesli. I had to convince myself that this was good (it was my job after all), and embrace this lack of food, hoping I could last the course.
We headed north towards the frozen wilderness and an isolated lodge we would call home for a short while.
As the lonely drive north passed through endless forest, the tarmac slowly disappeared under a layer of solid ice. I was glad we didn’t have to stop and fiddle around in freezing temperatures to fix snow chains to the wheels. Fortunately, the tyres had hard metal spikes, or nails as the Swedes like to call them. The little traffic we did encounter was mostly huge open-backed logging trucks stacked up with trunks, heading south to mills and ports. The chainsaw reaches everywhere.
We turned off the main road and drove slowly along an icy track through the darkening trees, until we crossed a bridge above a wide frozen river ten metres below us.
The instructions had been clear and we pulled up outside a white house. This was where the Hillbillies lived, two brothers, tall and huge like Viking lumberjacks. I don’t think the top of my head even reached their massive shoulders. They were nice, friendly, warm guys who showed us to our lonely spot, five km up the road.
I got out of the car and looked around. It was an old abandoned farm or small settlement with about four dilapidated wooden houses and several barns. There was also another house – a modern log cabin with moose tracks all around.
Big Ted had arrived.
It was dusk and the Hillbilly who was with us looked high into the twilight sky above our heads, where streaky clouds had gathered, and proclaimed it would be a great night for the northern lights. He was more than right, for in less than two hours after arriving, after we had sorted out our chattel, rooms and modest food, we were outside in the cold night air watching one of nature’s marvels.
It’s hard to explain the phenomenon, even photographs don’t come near to showing its full glory; in fact, most photographs of the northern lights only show a specific green – anti-freeze green, emerald green, fairy liquid green, or as the client pointed out, methadone green. I refrained from asking any prying questions!
That’s the type of green our camera shot, the frames looked marvellous: full of green flickering and swirling above the snow and pines. The trouble is – that’s not what our eyes saw at all. We saw a different green – soft green, lichen green, silver leaf green, soft and subtle with just a hint of emerald.
The display was bright and dazzling. It is said that the camera never lies, but as far as these northern lights were concerned, it told a huge fib. You can’t trust even an expensive digital camera, and I wondered what real film would have looked like…who knows? One thing is for sure – you’ve got to be there to really experience its wonder.
It was like being in a glass bowl with green light flickering and dancing from the zenith to the horizon in every direction – 360 degrees from the ground up to the centre of the universe above. The only place there was any black night sky was directly overhead – a small black circle at the very top.
It was a dark moon and a cloudless sky. The stars shone brightly through this green extravaganza. It’s not two-dimensional; it’s deep and layered, forever moving, sometimes with great speed, other times seemingly static and slow, but it’s always morphing. Wherever we looked, it was different – different shapes, swirls, speeds and hues.
Then it faded and was gone as if it never happened.
We got lucky, and we would get lucky four nights in a row.
An owl had hooted constantly somewhere close among the dark pines, and, as the show faded back into a dark starry night, I walked towards the trees to have a look, only to sink up to my waist in soft snow as the icy crust gave way.
We would have been going nowhere without our snowshoes.
The Hillbillies had told me that we could walk in any direction for 70 kilometres through the snow and forest. They didn’t know what lay beyond that – more snow and forest I suspected.
The first day of hiking was fairly gentle and undemanding, giving the client a chance to get used to the snowshoes. Actually, there is not much to it; snowshoeing is easy, non-technical and terrific fun. It’s great for building stamina with minimal stress. Of course, the up hills require oomph and push, making you breathe hard and sweat a little.
The day was still, crisp and sunny with hardly a cloud in the soft blue sky. I didn’t know the terrain and, in order to familiarise myself, I decided to follow some snow mobile tacks down a short steep hill through the forest. Before long, snow mobile tracks were going off in every direction, ensuring the return journey would be a confusing maze of tracks. As I hadn’t brought a compass, map or GPS I would be doing navigation the old-fashioned way – remembering the route, the direction of the wind and the sun. A few other tricks and there was a chance we wouldn’t get lost. Everywhere looked the same. The trees were all the same; well, I saw two types – silver birch and tal, a slow growing, tough Scandinavian pine. The small hills were all the same; the ground was all white, without any distinct geographical features, and it was a windless day.
There was one crafty trick left up my sleeve for the return navigation – I would very simply follow our tracks back in the snow! What great guiding skill is that you may ask… so I’m asking you to keep quiet – Mum’s the word – don’t want to blow my reputation!
I hoped snow wouldn’t fall to fill our tracks. Spending hours going round in circles is not what people pay for.
The forest was crisscrossed with many animal tracks and we passed fresh moose scat. But today was not a tracking day – today was a ‘getting used to it’ day for me.
We ended up on a small barren plateau where we waded through deep wet snow to an isolated boulder to sit, drink tea and eat a solitary, calorie free sandwich (well, not quite). The view was pretty and interesting. We could see for miles in all directions; however, wherever we looked, it really did look all
the same – small hills and endless forest, blindingly white to the horizon. Here and there, a few empty patches showed where the forest had been cut but not re-grown.
To the untrained eye it may all have looked like unspoilt forest wilderness, reaching out to every horizon, but it wasn’t. This place was a gigantic Arctic tree farm. It may be devoid of people and housing, but it’s totally managed, the trees being constantly cut and replanted. Tal is such a slow growing tree that a decent sized one takes more than ninety years to grow; therefore, the logging companies need this vast space to stay in business.
That’s what I saw – wilderness existing just for business and commerce. The client may have seen something different – maybe just snow; after all, she had requested we build a large snowman near the house. I kept it quiet that my snowman building skills were near zero.
The temperature dropped and we headed back to the log cabin.
That evening’s northern lights rolled over into another day of hiking. The Hillbillies had pointed to their local ‘mountain’ – a steep wooded hill with a near sheer drop on one side. It’s probably not more than four hundred metres above sea level, and from the frozen river rises up less than two hundred metres. That’s where we headed, across the frozen river and through a snow filled horse paddock. The Hillbillies had shown us how to trick the horses, to stop them from getting out and onto the small logging road when we opened the gate. We did this by feeding them along the fence away from the gate in a small enclosure. It gave us enough time to open and shut it before they could inquisitively return. The irony of this was that the horses were free to roam deep into the forest, over the hill and far away. In fact, we saw their hoof marks in the snow all over the place, and anyway, the fence that held the horses in ran out after about 100 metres!
It was impossible to get lost as the river was always in view, and if not, then the downward slopes would always take us there, as the river snaked around the hill. We saw lynx and a solitary wolf track along with a bunch of tracks I couldn’t identify. Fox was abundant for sure, but all the small weasel and martin-like tracks were too confusing for me to recognise.
The slope to the top was very steep and I ploughed up at speed, but not so fast that I had to stop to catch my breath. The client followed valiantly – it was just what she had ordered.
The top of the hill was small, with the ground quickly falling away in all directions. We found the only fallen tree still visible above the deep snow and used it to sit, drink tea and eat. The cold wind blew hard here and we were soon heading down to explore some different forest.
That evening after our aurora display, I decided to have a sauna. The client had already expressed her dislike of these hot houses, so I was on my own in the little log cabin, next to the house, with a wood burning stove. After about an hour, the stove was hot enough to pour water on and create steam. I had had the fantasy that after a hot steamy session and dripping with sweat I would be able to jump in the wet snow, bask awhile as the heat dissipated and melted the snow. No such luck or luxury – the snow was as hard as ice because that’s what it was – ice! So I had to fill up a few buckets with water for an icy drench.
It’s funny how things turn out…
The sauna was so hot that it was unbearable. I could hardly breathe because the heat burned my mouth and throat, and, when I went for a desperate cool down, the top half inch of water in the buckets was frozen solid. I cracked it open with a broom handle before drenching myself. I can’t say it was pleasant.
I had once been to a sweat lodge; the native Indian type that was so damned hot that everyone lay on the grassy floor in pitch black, gasping. I had had my hand over my mouth to stop the burning steam into my lungs, wondering how long this torture would persist before someone expired or the tent flap was opened to let the hot air out and the cool rush in.
Back then, I wondered what the point was, and now I thought the same.
I needed Big Ted for some answers.
Back at the house, as he stared out into dark night sky, I knew good things lay ahead. Sod the sauna; I had the northern lights and fabulous hikes. What more could I ask, except a bit more food perhaps?
Obviously, there were more hikes, but two stand out. The first hike crossed the frozen track in front of the house and into the woods, where we followed a narrow track winding through the trees towards a small tree-lined ridge, which we had previously seen from the road. It had looked the perfect place to hike – but, when we arrived to where the gentle slope of the ridge began, we changed our minds. The way ahead looked much more interesting. It was a small, open, flat valley, more like a wide frozen river, almost treeless with steep wooded inclines on either side. The top of the hills to our left side was our original ridge.
The empty way in front was white to the horizon, and, with the cold crisp air on our faces, it really did feel like the Arctic. Of course, it was the Arctic, but the presence of so many trees had thrown up doubt, suggesting we were not quite there. Now in this stark white reality I could really believe it. Funny thing one’s mind, eh!
At our steady pace we could have hiked all day on this endless flat basin neatly nestled between two low wooded ridges. However, the client had taken a renewed interest in our original plan and was now admiring the left hand ridge, wondering if there were great views from the top down to the frozen river valley on the other side. We changed course, and an easy uphill plod took us to the edge of the steep rocky drop from the top. No way could we hike up that, so we continued under the ridge until the steep slope petered out somewhat and the way up became more manageable. It was still steep, with massive boulders hiding deep holes where the snowdrift had piled up. I knew the dangers here, and I continuously prodded the snow with my hiking poles. Occasionally they disappeared deep into a dangerous void. Not wanting to fall six feet under and land on some jagged edge, I gave these places a wide berth.
Finally, we arrived on the ridge, not the high point, we still had some way to go to reach that, and turned left, back towards the direction we had come, hiking up through undisturbed forest and a maze of snowy boulders. The going was steep and slow, the route always twisting and turning around rocks and hidden holes. I had to check that every step was safe, and even with great caution, I sometimes broke through the snow up to my waist.
The client was nervous, kept telling me to be careful, take care, which I was, and I showed her the technique of checking for holes with her hiking poles. Even so, she didn’t like it there in this steep rocky forest so I suggested we turn around and go back the way we came. But that was an even worse scenario for her.
Then she told me her real concern. She didn’t mind about the snow holes – I was taking care of those.
It was the Bears!
The Bears?
Yes the Bears. They may be hibernating deep under a rock. To be exact, in one of those holes I was prodding. Her concern was that I might prod a sleeping bear on the nose.
Oh, I hadn’t thought about that. The Hillbillies later told me that they had no idea where the bears go to sleep in the winter. Sweden has around 2500 bears, so what are the odds of accidently poking one on the nose? I had no clue. I later asked Big Ted about these sleeping bears, but he just smiled and kept looking out for moose.
It had been hard making a safe route through this complicated terrain, and now I had the bears to worry about as well! I didn’t really worry, but from that point on, I did stay away from the very large boulders with deep drifts.
Finally, we reached the top. There was no view of course, as the dense uncut trees blocked out everything. The terrain was far too complicated and tricky for it ever to have been worth logging up here, and we stopped for lunch in this natural piece of forest. It was cold and the whole place full of unfriendly boulders, which were impossible to sit on. I reckoned that the forest floor abounded with fallen trees to sit and rest on, but right there and then, deep hard snow covered everything. After a little search, we found a broken tree and sat on its tr
unk to eat our scant lunch. I pondered taking off my thick gloves, a risky move because once cold, our hands would take an age to warm up again. However, holding a cup of hot tea and undoing a wrapper was near impossible so we both removed our gloves. Within minutes, we had them back on again. God it was cold, and soon we were heading along the ridge to warm up, reversing the route we had originally intended.
The trees thinned and finally vanished – victims of the chainsaw – as we steeply dropped to the valley floor.
The Hillbillies had invited us to their hideout in the dense forest above the sheer banks of the frozen river. They were cool guys, wanting us to share and experience their forest life.
After they had convinced us that the ice really was six feet deep, we hacked along the frozen river on snowmobiles. For those who don’t have snowmobile experience and have some kind of fantasy of what it’s like, I’ll try to put things straight. If you are the sort who likes the loud aggressive noise of an old two-stroke motorbike screaming in your ears along with the smell of petrol fumes and dirty exhaust as you shatter the delicate silence of an awesome landscape, terrifying every creature in a five hundred meter radius, then this is for you. Perhaps it’s less damaging than a 4x4 churning up the forest floor, it’s probably a lot more fun, but not for me.
Anyway, we arrived at their place. It was a well-built, ramshackle, wooden lodge with an old kitchen, large social room and a room with some bunk beds. They were cooking us up some moose stew on an old wood burning stove. These two brothers were the sort of guys that could do everything practical imaginable – build their house, fix trucks, hunt and grow their own food (although the growing part seemed to start and end with mountain potatoes), cut timber and farm reindeer – they could also repair their own clothes and use the internet. Their family had been in these forests since at least 1700 and they still owned around one thousand hectares of trees, which they now fiercely protected. They were proud to have stopped all bird shooting on their land and the cutting of all big trees – that scored a few brownie points with me.
While the moose stew slowly cooked, we headed out to view a waterfall, a famous local landmark, whose powerful flow is so strong that it never completely freezes solid. The river directly below the fall was a turbulent black hole and the surrounding ice must have been thin. We drove the long way round to the top. The small river at the top ran steep before vertically dropping its torrent about forty feet into the menacing black hole below. An impressive new fish ladder zigzagged up the side of the falls.
Today this place was frozen, but in a few months it would be full of melting snow, turning the river into a dangerous high flood before the arrival of summer, when the river would slow down, become crystal clear and less than a meter deep in places, full of fish, beaver, otter and darting birds.
At the top of the falls, set back about thirty feet, was a flat picnic recreation area open to the small river on one side and surrounded by forest on the rest. In this spot and blending well into the landscape were some wooden buildings, which included a small wooden roundhouse with a central fireplace, some bunkhouses, pit toilets and a cafe lodge, which was closed.
The client and I peered through the windows of the cafe lodge.
In every country and place I have ever visited where people shoot for fun and sport (and by this I mean a place where there is not a desperate need to eat what is shot) I am always greeted with the same sight – a lodge or cabin full of well presented stuffed local animals. And here we had a splendid example: a lynx, a wolf, a bear, a moose head, weasels and the like, all proudly displayed on the walls and among the neatly positioned tables and chairs of the rustic interior. Later on, during our return journey back to the airport we would stop at a roadside cafe, another rustic lodge with friendly staff and great food; here they had a special room displaying the spoils of slaughter, including owls and huge hawks. Maybe one day these places will be like dinosaur museums, a reminder of what once lived but no longer does.
Oh well, back to the moose stew.
It was tough, chewy and strongly flavoured with a slightly rancid edge, but I can’t say it was particularly tasty. I had to wait until my hands warmed up before I could hold a knife and fork. The icy wind whilst driving the snow mobile had gone right through my mountaineering gloves and now my hands were freezing and painful.
I had noticed that both Hillbillies had worn thick old-fashioned leather gauntlets, and later I bought myself a pair. Never again would I suffer from the debilitating pain extreme cold dishes out. My modern mountaineering gloves are now relegated to riding pushbikes and changing tyres in the snow.
We were plied with schnaps and red cowberries soaked in some kind of powerful alcohol, and by the time we were shown around the reindeer farm, I was quite merry to say the least.
I had no interest in reindeer farming, but the client was curious. However, the pitiful sight of these exquisite creatures tightly tethered or showing terror as they were herded around a small enclosure, soon had her hailing a cab back home. As we sat on the snow mobile just before I pulled the starter cord, a beautiful white reindeer trotted past; it looked delicate and softly magical, its warm breath steaming in the icy air. I had once seen a completely white stag in the Sussex countryside with huge antlers being followed by a herd of thirty roes – a lucky and rare sight indeed.
I pulled the cord and wrecked the silence. Reindeer scattered to the corners of the enclosure as I drove the snow mobile rather slowly away and definitely not in a straight line back along the frozen river to where I had parked the car.
By the way, there are no wild reindeer left in Sweden, every single one roaming the forests is farmed, their ears clipped and tagged in recognisable ways to show ownership. Bears, wolves, lynx and wolverines don’t understand this ownership thing and suffer persecution if they dine on their natural dinner.
The following day it started to snow, lightly but steadily. We walked from the house and, although our snowshoe prints were deep and clear, I did wonder if after some hours they would slowly fill and become invisible. I tried to remember the twists and turns between the trees so we could get back to our lodge without getting lost.
Now, having seen the snow falling before we left the house, I reckoned it would be a great day out for Big Ted. I mean, he’s a bear – right? Therefore, the snow and cold should be perfect for him, but I wasn’t taking any chances; after all, he may have got a little soft with all the central heating and indoor living. I wrapped him up in a scarf and placed him in the top part of my backpack, so he was looking out behind me as we hiked.
When we took a break and I took the backpack off, it was good to see him looking out and covered in snow smiling at the world. Even the client asked how he was. He’s a bear I said, and with a bear, we could never get lost or need to worry about poking a sleeping bear on the nose – Big Ted would fix it all.
There was one mishap on the trail – well, two really. The first was my tummy – it had been gurgling all morning, and the client’s too. We deduced that the rancid moose stew combined with Hillbilly cowberry schnaps was now playing havoc with our non-Arctic sensibilities. When it got too much to endure, I threw my backpack to the ground and headed for the bushes.
What relief!
The client was also suffering but she never made a bush run. Perhaps she was too polite and cultured, or just had robust iron guts, to do such a public thing.
On returning, I found her dusting off thick snow from Big Ted’s head. In my urgency, I had dropped him face down in the snow. Oh, maybe he was mad at me, but as the client quickly pointed out – he was still smiling and having a great day out.
Our snowshoe tracks had filled up and had mostly disappeared, but the way home was not so tricky and we arrived with hours to spare before the darkness brought the Northern Lights.
Apparently, it was snowman time. However, I had a good way out of this: the client had also asked to be shown how to dig a snow hole; an emergency shelter in case one is stu
ck out in a storm at night. She would build the snowman whilst I dug out the shelter a few feet away. We did this right by the house.
The snow was hard and icy, so no way could she gather snow to complete her work of art. To build a snow hole in these conditions required an ice axe and loads of grunt and toil. I had the axe but the client needed snow, buckets of it, as her plan was large and grand.
I went to the shed and found a large shovel. My job had suddenly become a whole lot easier.
Usually snow holes are dug into a slope, but here, with no slopes anywhere nearby, it had to be dug into the flat – a deep trench, big enough to shelter two people and their gear.
I started digging. God the snow was hard, and I smashed it up small enough for the client to create slowly her snow-white monster. I actually sweated as I dug non-stop to complete the hole. I didn’t need to work so hard, but in a real life situation, that’s what you do, work like the clappers to finish the shelter before you freeze to death or a storm batters the life out of you.
And there it was – three and a half feet deep, a yard wide and around seven feet long. I don’t think I could ever dig such a magnificent hole on the side of an isolated mountain. I wouldn’t have a shovel for a start, and I would probably be so desperate that I would only dig down far enough to lie flat and be out of the wind.
However, here it was – my textbook snow hole…trench.
Meanwhile, the client had been busy; in fact, she worked well into darkness using a torch to finish off the details.
It was impressive. It was a fat snowman with a big head. Charcoal from the sauna made his eyes and teeth, a big curved red chilli for his hooked nose, fir cones for his buttons, some light green lichen for his eyebrows and moustache and twigs for his arms. He wore an old baseball cap I had rummaged from the shed.
I filled in my trench the following day. I didn’t want to risk the next guest at the lodge falling in, as it was very hard to see in the dazzling white landscape.
There’s not much more to say about the trip. It was a great success and the client is now size zero and a stick thin international celebrity (actually not, she’s far too robust and worldly to become such a vacuous thing).
On returning home, I placed Big Ted on the conservatory table looking out to sea. There were no avocados ripening in the sun that day.
Work had become scant, just a few jobs here and there, so I needed a plan, a helping hand, if you like. Instead of shark watch, I put Big Ted and Mrs. Leenee on job watch, on the table hand in hand, gazing out to sea beyond the horizon and far away. A great plan I thought. I wasn’t too sure if putting Big Ted and Mrs. Leenee together again after Big Ted had complained was such a good idea, but I decided to take the risk anyway.
I wondered how far away the jobs were, maybe too far for even the combined powers of Big Ted and Mrs. Leenee. Therefore, I needed another thing to make this job search more tangible, more accessible, or better still – more real.
Whilst in Brighton doing a small job on a roof, I heard an ice cream van cruise around the local streets playing its ice cream tune. What was that tune? I racked my brain but couldn’t get it at all, knowing that’s what Big Ted and Mrs. Leenee needed – a tune, a song, a lullaby to entice and lure those unsuspecting jobs onto shore where they would flounder in the shallows by Shark Fin Rock. After that, it would be easy pickings for the two monkeys to go down and drag the jobs up to me. (I had two more monkeys by then who just held hands all day – they could do with a little exercise.)
Somewhere in my brain was this perfect lullaby, perfect like the deadly hymns of the Lorelei on the Rhine or the Sirens in Greek mythology. Then the penny dropped. That Brighton ice cream van tune was no other than The Teddy Bears’ Picnic. I kid you not. No wonder it was driving me crazy. The next bit was easy – I played The Teddy Bears’ Picnic to the two Teds and sang along. Being smart Teds, they got it in a jiffy. Now, all I had to do was wait.
However, life never quite works out as you plan.
Going into the conservatory the following day, I knew something was amiss.
Big Ted was gone!
Maybe someone in the house was playing a prank on me to show me how all this Ted behaviour was simply just absurd. But no, they all pleaded innocence.
I looked around and there he was, on the floor, sitting upright below the table looking very grumpy indeed.
What had happened? Had Mrs. Leenee shoved him off over the edge? Had Big Ted jumped to get away?
I called Mission Command and she reckoned that Mrs. Leenee was actually a male Ted. I had got it wrong and Big Ted had got it right. In my Ted world, they should never have been holding hands.
Big Ted had jumped.
I had forced them together like an arranged marriage and, as Mrs. Leennee was a fully blown Rescue Ted full of who knows what drama, this was a disaster waiting to happen. I had turned Mrs. Leenee into a Lady Boy. Maybe he or she didn’t mind, after all he or she now had a nice home, and perhaps being a Lady Boy Ted was a small price to pay.
But Big Ted wasn’t having any of it. What a mess, I had truly stuffed up. I should have let things be.
I kept Big Ted on the table gazing out to sea and put Mrs. Leenee on some avocados looking out to sea on the other side of the room.
The natural order was once again restored. And you know what? After this, the jobs started coming in.
Time for Big Ted’s next adventure overseas.
At the End of a Rainbow
Ask Andy or Alice, they’ll tell how it was; they were with me standing close – right in the middle of a rainbow’s end.
You may well think this is fiction or fantasy, or perhaps just delusion, but it’s not – this is real.
It was somewhere in Shropshire, I forget exactly where, but near to Ludlow on the Welsh border side, magnificent green countryside with rolling hills, small river valleys and big forests.
We were out in the open, in the fields on the kind of day that is pleasant and warm with nice sunshine. However, as this was England, it was cut by the occasional summer shower.
We’d had a summer of long walks with heavy packs, as we were all off to Nepal to hike to Everest Base Camp and thought it best to get some training in and spend time hanging out together.
So there we were, at the top of a small field surrounded by trees. The field sloped down in front of us, but it also sloped down to our left – it was like a bank, a kind of difficult and useless field if you were a farmer, but for the hiker it was a small hidden delight.
Across a gate, down in the left hand corner of the field, we saw a small rainbow go to ground – nothing we hadn’t all seen a million times before. It shimmered against the trees, and went to ground on the short green, wet grass.
Nothing special and certainly nothing unusual so far, but then I suggested as a joke that we should stand in it and find a pot of gold.
You may think this is absurd, but as we walked across the field towards it, instead of disappearing or moving away as science tells us it should, it remained the same – it didn’t move an inch.
We didn’t speak until we were right close to it – maybe ten feet away, perhaps even closer. It shimmered mainly green and red, transparent like a giant soap bubble with all the colours of the rainbow moving and subtly vibrating.
Can you believe it? We could hardly believe our eyes.
So we stepped right on into it, all three of us. Maybe the rainbow was about four feet across, and we all fitted in it, looking at each other, wondering what was going on. It really was like being in a soap bubble – looking through the soft coloured hues at each other and the field and trees outside.
Bewildered, we asked each other – is this real? We all agreed that we were seeing and having the same experience. Stepping out we were in the regular daylight, looking at a rainbow’s end, and stepping in again we were in a rainbow, a giant soap bubble.
It was bedazzling and as real as anything you experience in an ordinary day.
&nbs
p; I can’t remember what we said to each other, probably not a lot – what could we say!
We moved away to the end of the field a short distance away to cross another gate. I decided to return and have a reality check – there it was, still there and I stepped in again and looked at my friends looking back at me in a rainbow’s end and me looking back at them through a soft soapy multicoloured rainbow.
I returned to where they waited in silence and we watched together as the rainbow slowly disappeared into thin air.
A scruffy man appeared with a boy, the gamekeeper; he had seen his pheasants rise up in flight and wondered if poachers were in the woods. We told him our story, and he looked and acknowledged he could see the fading rainbow and had seen it in the sky as normal not so long ago.
He looked at us and then back to the field and then back at us with a frown.
Then we continued on our way.
We still all agree on what we saw and experienced – not that anyone ever believes us.
I stood in the end of a rainbow with two friends. There was no pot of gold, but just being able to do such a thing is more treasure than you could possibly wish.
Other Books by the Author
No Place Like Home – A perilous journey full of love, deception and delusion.
Set in the dramatic and raw landscapes of the Basque Pyrenees, Biafra and the Belgium Congo, the story follows the plight of Jacques Freeman, a lonely brooding bachelor lamenting his days in the south of France after losing his home and family to a violent African revolution. Six powerful characters, three women and three men, interplay in this gritty and exhilarating novel.
The World Peace Journals – A Himalayan journey into madness, mayhem and adventure!
It documents a Nepal not spoken or written about in other travel or adventure stories – not sparing the reader from harsh realities, corruption and madness; a sojourn into the Himalayas that succinctly captures the myths, history, geography and people in a way that shocks but also brilliantly entertains.
Breast Fed by Telephone
A Collection of Modern Poetry
About the Author
Ben Gilbert is an outdoor guide, explorer, life coach and writer. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and founder of TheBlueSpace Guides Co-operative – www.bengilbertguide.com.
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