Each year men and women from a few corners of the world come to Preikestolen, Norway, to die. Most notably, in 2004, after making a pact on an Internet chat room, an Austrian woman and a Norwegian man met on the rock and jumped.
The breathtaking view is void of any human trampling. For those attempting to escape the dreary burden of their humanity, Preikestolen is a welcome refuge. Yet it seems that its beauty could almost convince one to bear such a burden longer, if only to live to see it again. But, as a Swedish traveler cheerfully recounted while we stood on Pulpit Rock some time in April, “If I had to pick a place to die, this would be the one.”
—
He estimates about eleven seconds. That’s the time it would take his pen to reach the fjord’s icy surface. Right now, that pen is clinched firmly between his thumb and index finger. He writes. The cheap ink smudges onto his left hand, but he does not notice. He stops and thinks of the pen’s descent. Of how it could click and clatter along the rocks’ cool surface, finally diving off the edge. If he could only let it go.
His ancestors have baptized the rock he’s on as Preikestolen; Pulpit Rock, for it stands like a podium at the edge of the earth. As he lies face down on the rock’s lumpy surface, pelvis and elbows numbed by the igneous mattress, he hears his breath echoing off the notebook’s pages.
There is no one here. He is alone. Nature provides its own kind of quiet. Across the fjord, a constant flow of glacier water rushes down the mountain’s face like sweat. It glides and splashes, threading white dashes through the brown rocks. The icy filaments plunge off the slanted surface, adding their freshness to the fjord’s salty waters. Their constant humming overpowers the man’s breath. The wind is gentle. It whistles through his ears. Birds are loud, their chirping amplified by the clear air. But he does not hear this. He hears only his breath on the notebook. He writes.
The sun is strong and warms his face. The rock chills his belly. But he feels neither cold nor heat. As his eyes focus on the notebooks’ empty grey lines – soon to be filled with the thought – they catch glimpses of the glistening waters, two thousand feet below. He stops his furtive scribbling. His eyes look up to the snowcapped mountains sprouting from each side of the fjord.
If only he could see what I have seen:
Flat lands of grass and evergreens inched between high peaks; rugged hues of blue, white, brown, and green; red houses like monopoly pieces rooted into the foothills; networks of rivers stuck in perpetual darkness, curled up against high reaching cliffs. If only he could fly this stationary airplane and seize the vantage point. He could look down at earth like a god narrator and think, it will all be okay in the end.
But he does not see what I’ve seen, because I have not seen what he sees.
What he sees is a sharply focused thought in a blurred background. He knows the background to be spectacular; to be free from this thought he scribbles, but this is both too much and not enough. If only the pen could drop. If only the thought could go. Then maybe his eyes could really feel those snowcapped mountains sprouting from each side of the fjord.
Now he thinks of the old man he met a few hours before. He thinks of their long hike up a stony path to reach this rock he now straddles, both literally and figuratively. The old Norwegian man, in between breaths and agile bounces, had retold the urban legend of a dog who died at the bottom of that rock long ago. A boy, the story went, having grilled too many sausages while picnicking on Pulpit Rock, threw the remnants over the edge. They fell for about eleven seconds before reaching the fjord’s icy surface. So did a hungry dog which, having arrived to the top before its owner, ran off after them. An old woman reached the rock a few minutes later, and asked if someone had seen her flying Fido.
But no one will search for him, he knows. He is not a dog. There is no old woman. And a dog could never see what he has seen, or think what he is thinking.
From this earthly pulpit, he scratches his final sermon onto the pages of his notebook. He does not hear the sermon nature offers back to him. Slowly, he rises. The notebook remains on the edge of the cliff. The pen, the thought, remain also. He replaces them with an image of this frozen background; of this place of ravaging beauty whose pleas he fails to hear. Now he wants to be this image, peaceful.
The last page of his notebook flaps lazily in the wind.
He jumps.
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That was beautiful, Annick. Bravo.
Loved it. Well done.
Jordy & Tom – Thanks. Much appreciated!