Week 17: Kaamanen, Kevo, Utsjoki and THE END

September 10, 2003

By the end, I finally knew what I was doing. I was finally confident. I was finally in mountains. I was finally someplace I could love – Lapland. I was finally sincerely happy and, maybe for the first time in my life, I took pleasure in absolutely every moment of the day.

I saw fewer pines each day and the birch were shorter and all yellow and orange. The swamps were rusty with wide swaths of water that reminded me of quicksilver. Ground shrubs were scarlet or crimson and the mornings very foggy. The nights were cold but the days were warm. There were reindeer everywhere.

I left Inari and covered the 30km to Kaamanen in one day. I passed Saturday night there and all of Sunday, waiting for my passport to come in the Monday morning mail. But I hadn’t planned my food correctly and Sunday I had to buy some food from the little store in the cafe. The prices were unreal, so I settled for a small bag of macaroni, costing me 2.10 euros. I complained about the price to the sour-faced woman staring me down from across the counter, but in the end, I had no choice. I needed the food. Monday morning I returned to the café for a coffee as I headed out of town. The same bag of macaroni now cost 0.40 euros. I held it up to her. “Don’t shop on Sundays.” she said to me with a frown.

At Kielatupa I met Klaus. He coughed like a smoker. He had large tanned hands and piercing blue eyes that squinted when he listened. His English was ungainly. His Finnish non-existent. He moved with an ease that didn’t match his bulk and everything about him was fatherly. He smiled easily.

In his room there were maps and rocks. 1:24 000 topos he studied with a magnifying glass, noting things that confused him (lakes on small, flat bumps of 5-10 meters, a river that ran uphill and large rocks situated on the tops of high, narrow points) and larger, 1:50 000 geologic maps of Lapland that hung on the walls. The rocks were samples and he had them catalogued and numbered, their point of origin marked on the appropriate map. He also had a shovel, several compasses, a fedora and piece of bread and a tomato. On his bed lay a long rod attached to red box with a switch. It said: ‘Goldspear’. Klaus was looking for gold.

Klaus was from Berlin. He was born in 1943. He had a wife who was Turkish. In 1998, she left him; went to Turkey and disappeared. He wrote to her at her mother’s home, but he had received not a word. His daughter studied at a University in Austria. He said she was too pretty for her own good.

I said that Lapland reminded me of New Mexico. “There’s something of the desert in the Arctic.” I said. He was incredulous. The wide open fells blanketed in low shrubs could easily pass for Otero Mesa or the grasslands of the Sky Islands. The canyons were shockingly similar to the Rio Grande Valley or the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado. “The only real difference,” I said. “is in the amount of water.”

Klaus had been coming to Finland for Gold every summer since 1962. At that time he prowled the rivers near Säriselkä and the fells that are now inside Urho Kekonen National Park. “It was better then. No restrictions. No Wilderness areas. No National Parks. I hate National Parks. Now there’s tourists and hikers and skiers. Before, it was just the gold miners and the reindeer herders. Now, they wont let me prospect for gold. Environmental rules screw up everything.”

I pointed out that, if it was just a few guys like him, out half-assed, prospecting with a boat, shovel and pan, that would be one thing. But the giant sluice-boxes, steam shovels and high-pressure hoses the Lemmenjoki miners use are tearing down entire hillsides, destroying rivers and poisoning the water. “Parts of my home state are totally poisoned by large scale mining. Most of the world is open to mining, we gotta save something. And, what do you want,” I asked. “a Lapland that looks like a gravel pit?” He knew what I was talking about and deep down, he could easily agree. He nodded his head. “Ja, ja. But…what is the great American battle cry?”

“Give me liberty or…”

“No, no…’the government stole my land!” He thought this incredibly funny.

I was going to the canyons and wide fells of the Kevo Strict Nature Reserve and did not want to walk in the road. I wanted to go back into the hills. Klaus knew a shortcut, but he wasn’t going to walk. “Then, can we go by boat?” I asked. He laughed. “Get in the car.” He said. I did and we drove about 5km down the asphalt to a barely noticeable break in the birch. “Here.” We climbed out and walked together up a small hill. There, we looked at the rocks – they were almost 3 billion years old. I took a compass bearings on several hills to the NE and NW. “Take a new compass bearing on that hill when you come to the place where they gather the reindeer.”

“What will you do?”

“I’m going to Kargasniemi to buy a salmon. A big one. Then I’ll boil it lightly. No salt. No spices. Just the taste of the fish.” He looked happy but I was sad to part from him. I wanted to look for gold with him, and push a boat up a shallow, gravely stream into the Wilderness. I think sometimes that I’m getting tired of meeting people I love and then watching them fade away out into the world.

Days later, I was at the border. I walked along the wide, gravely Tenojoki for two days. Norway was just across the river. I couldn’t convince myself that I had actually walked across Finland.

On the last night I slept in a cabin by the river. It was a very cold night. The river valley was completely black. Around 1 a.m. I went outside for a piss and saw the Northern Lights. They were light greenish, nearly white. They shot across the sky like rockets and then disappeared. Then a curtain appeared in the north and waved as if in a breeze. Another appeared looking like a broken egg and then, more rockets. Several stars fell through the show and, I swear to God, I could hear them. It was a high-pitched moan and its intensity came and went with the strength of the light show. I stood, naked and cold, in a wonderland of dark and light. It felt like a ‘congratulations’ from God. I had never felt more humble in all my life.

I came to Nuorgam late in the afternoon of September 14th. The streets were nearly deserted, the stores empty and a brisk breeze blew up the valley. The border was a dilapidated fence with a speed bump. There was a sign and a concrete pile marking the point as the “northernmost point in the European Union”. I stepped into Norway and thought: “Is that it?”

END

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