How to Fly

The last time I flew was somewhere between Kautokeino and Lakselv, far inside the Arctic Circle, in the Norwegian province of Finnmark. It was early May, but I was still driving on snow tyres when I left the tiny, unheated hytte that I’d borrowed in Kautokeino and headed east towards Karasjoka; by the time I reached the hazy white turn in the road that would take me back north, to Lakselv’s tiny civilian airport, the snow had almost stopped and the sun was out, glittering on the rivers and thaw-streams, illuminating the land so that what had seemed like grey, monotonous scrub a few minutes before was now full of subtle colour: the rich browns and soft purples of the birch twigs; the pale yellows and greens of Salix lapponica; the soft oranges and blue-greys and reds of the mosses and lichens. Towards Lakselv, the land is owned by the Norwegian military: in places, it is forbidden to stop, except in cases of emergency. Normally, I pay attention to the warning signs that are posted everywhere along this route, but that day, I ignored them. I wanted to go for a last walk in this sudden theatre of light and colour: just a short hike to carry home the silent chill of the tundra in my bones and my nervous system. I pulled in and positioned the car so it couldn’t easily be observed from the highway, then I struck out, heading along a reindeer track beside a wide, frozen lake, picking my way through the snow, listening to the thaw-streams as they trickled down the gentle slopes, a sound I’d heard before, in the work of the Sami poet and musician, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, long before I ever saw Finnmark.

I didn’t go far. It was still cold, and I had to be back in Lakselv that night, to return my hire car; besides, I was nervous about the military. I skirted the lake for a while, letting the May sunshine warm my face, then I turned back. The great thing about the sub-Arctic is that a few days, or an hour, or even a couple of minutes can be enough: it is a land full of signs, a land of sudden, local miracles. All you have to do is learn how to find them. That day, I thought I’d had my gift, with the sun and the colours and the sound of the thaw-water; then, a few hundred yards from where I’d left the car, I disturbed a flock of ptarmigan and they flared up out from the snow-covered scrub, white birds in a field of white, their wings whirring, a sound like tiny wheels turning in my flesh — and suddenly, with no sense that anything out of the ordinary was happening, and perhaps for no more than a few seconds, I was rising too, flaring up into the air, just like the birds, wingless, dizzy, my head full of whiteness. I don’t want to make of this any more than it was: it lasted less than a minute, and it was in no way mystical or even inexplicable. At the same time, though, I do want to give that moment its due, because I did take to the air, I did fly and, for a few moments, I was one of those birds, attuned to the flock, familiar with the sky. Some miracles are purely personal and may be entirely imaginary, but they are miracles, nonetheless. I’d disturbed ptarmigan like this more than once — it’s difficult not to, out on the tundra — but I had never felt this sensation before. For the first time, I had come close enough, and I had been caught up, carried away, offered the gift of a moment’s flight.

Later, I dropped off the car and found a place to stay for the night. It was a quiet, rather austere guest house, the only one in town that was open. My room had a picture window, with a view of snowy birch trees and a low, dark wood beyond. The plane back to Tromsø departed around two o’clock the following afternoon; I had plenty of time, and nothing else to do but take it easy — a guarantee, if ever there was one, that I would find it impossible to sleep. When I’m away from home, I only sleep well when things are happening: in transit, say, or in busy cities, with traffic and voices all around me. That night, in a world of indelible stillness, the snow muffling any sound that might have filtered through the birch woods, the guest house itself utterly deserted, I lay awake for a long time, listening to the silence, remembering the feel of the tundra; then I got up, packed my kit-bag, and went down to the kitchen, where some bits and pieces had been left out for breakfast. I had a few slices of Gjetost cheese and some coffee and, feeling warmed and milky inside, I set out to walk the mile or so to the airport. It was six o’clock in the morning.

That far north, the nights are white, even in May. I walked in a cold, chalky light, the only human creature awake on the northern vidda, it seemed, and I took my time, stoking up my solitude rations, tuning in to the rhythm that comes off the earth in the sub-Arctic, a rhythm like no other, a pulse that lingers for days, or weeks, in the fabric of bone and flesh: a pulse that is almost a sound, like a drumbeat, or a harmonic. I didn’t want to go back to the occupied world; I wanted to stay there, to stay in tune with this land, to gaze up at this sky. The Finnmarksvidda is high and wide, close to the sky, a place for clearing the senses, for becoming far-sighted, and I knew that to go back was to be diminished in so many ways, to close down a little. Yet I had no choice: there were chores to do and promises to keep. By the time I reached the airport, I was resigned to life as the person I seem to be, in the civilized world.

The vidda had one gift left for me, however. Because Lakselv is a remote, tiny airport at the very top of Europe, it is never busy and, in winter, it almost falls out of use. Once a day, it seems, a plane comes in, discharges its few passengers, then turns back and returns to Tromsø, rising from this narrow coastal town and crossing the high plateau en route, allowing its passengers a privileged glimpse of the steep, snow-covered sides of the vidda, one of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. The rest of the time, it is quiet — though not, perhaps, as quiet as it was that morning, when I walked into the foyer and found it silent and deserted. It was darker indoors than out, which gave the place an eerie feel, and I walked through to the departure area, from where I could look out at the runway. Nobody was there. The runway was covered in snow, like the land round about, and had it not been for the airport building I could have been in the middle of nowhere. I sat down, facing out into the whiteness. Time had stopped. Everything was still. I was alone in the world.

People who live in the sub-Arctic, like the inhabitants of prairies and deserts, are more gregarious than city folk: not being surrounded by strangers all day, even the most solitary among them learns to appreciate a little company. I understand that, and I understand the practical reasons for valuing one’s neighbours, when they might be needed at any moment, but I prefer to be alone in almost any circumstances, and this empty place, this deserted airport, was a double gift: first, because it allowed me to sit quietly and spend a last few hours with the self I am when I am far from home, and, second, because it was filled with a dream of flight, a room full of sky and the group memories of aviation. All I could see were a runway and a windsock, but that was enough: the spirits of Amy Johnson, of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, of Léon Delagrange were there all around me, suspended on the air, perfected and eternalized, in the snow and the grass under the snow, in the clouds and the ozone, in the wind that gusted across the runway and in the pulse that rose from the earth and passed like a current through my body, even here, in this modern airport lounge. The spirits of the vanished were there with me, and I was with them, alone in a cold white place, and capable of disappearing in my own right, at any moment. I sat a long time, that day, waiting for my flight — and some of me is sitting there still, enjoying the stillness, becoming the silence, learning how to vanish. Every day, in every way, I am disappearing, just a little — and it feels like flying, it feels like the kind of flight I was trying for, that first time, when I was nine years old — but it has nothing to do with the will, and it has nothing to do with trying. If it happens at all, it happens as a gift: and this is the one definition of grace that I can trust. The air which surrounds me, so intangible and so commonplace that it seldom arrests my attention, is in reality a vast, unexplored ocean, fraught with possibilities. Even now, the pioneers of a countless fleet are vanishing into brightness and, steadily, surely, all the wonderful possibilities continue to unfold.