126. A camp in the Norwegian Mountains, August, 2017

With all our modern conveniences it is easy to forget Le Corbusier’s, “A house is a machine for living in.” That lesson, however, is most clear here in “Mebu”, (pronounced “May Boo”, roughly meaning “my house”), the mountain cabin of our friends, Roar (pronounced Ru-ar) and Inger nestled in the remote mountains of Norway near Ringabu. It is a Nordic land of raindeer and (surprisingly) musk oxen and (less surprisingly) of wolves and arctic hare and Ptarmigan.

The cabin is about 300–400 yards up an invisible path, which now (in the rain) is a small trickling stream, running across/around moss-covered stones that our hosts have carefully deposited over the years to make the footing more sure. Once up the path, large flat slabs form loose stone stairs leading to wooden ones that lead in turn to a small open porch outside an enclosed mudroom. About a quarter mile below stretches Lake Atna; an equal distance above trees grudgingly give way to wild-flower-covered upland meadows punctuated by lingering patches of snow.

On distant hillsides across the valley, beyond the lake, the forest floor is solid Reindeer lichen. From Mebu those hillsides look as if they are well-cropped light green lawns setting off the conifers.

The surrounding forest is made up of twisted birch, aspen, pine and juniper over a carpet of heather,

wild flowers and grasses (including Arctic grass with its tuft of “cotton” trembling in the breeze).

The trees are twisted and slow to grow because we are at 900 meters altitude and the tree line in this Nordic spot (latitude @64 degrees, north; compare Anchorage Alaska at 61.2), is only 1000 meters. A small birch that on Hancock point might be 15 years old, here may be 50.

The brown-stained cabin is simple. One end of the rectangular “machine for living” is taken up by a “great room” that includes both a sitting and a dining area with a small (6’ x6’) kitchen nestled in one corner. A central hall runs from front to back of the cabin.

Three bedrooms are off to the right. The bedrooms are literally that: rooms filled with built-in beds. In our room a double bed extends from wall to wall to wall, with a built-in single running above over one half of the double bed. The “upper bunk” provides a good spot to store our suitcases.

A window lets in fresh, cool air. At the foot of the beds there is room for the door to open inward and a small cabinet off to the right for storing our clothes.

Extending outward from the rectangle protrudes what we might call a “mud room” where coats are hung, boots set neatly in a row and firewood stacked.

There you have it. That is, as it were, the machine for living, but the above gives you no sense of the human intelligence/ingenuity that makes the machine run so well — no sense of how and why the cabin, uncluttered by running water or electricity, is so well suited to human habitation.

For light, (hardly needed now in these long summer days), there is a solar panel on the front of the cabin that provides some evening light, but kerosene lamps and candles hold sway providing a soft, gentle light. (I should note that even now, in mid-August, it does not get dark until about 10:30pm. Dawn comes commensurately early — both are accompanied by long lingering twilights.)

“But it is cold”, you say! Not to worry; four heating “stoves” are clustered near the center of the house: a wood-burning stove, a traditional open fireplace, a kerosene stove and a propane stove. Using only the wood-burning stove, we are warm and cozy even when it is cold and rainy outside. Speaking of the mechanics of this machine for living, a homemade drying rack extends toward the ceiling above the stoves.

“But you said there was no water?” No, just no “running water” in the house. Water is provided through a pipe running (gravity fed) from a nearby stream to a faucet just outside the kitchen window. The four of us were perfectly comfortable using just the water warmed in a large kettle on the top of the afore-mentioned wood stove. Want fresh, cool water to drink? Just open the kitchen window and turn on the outdoor spigot from which we draw a bucket of fresh water into which we dip glasses to quench our thirst.

“What about refrigeration?” Some food is submerged in the nearby stream, fed by the melting glacier. Outside the kitchen window hangs a screened-in cabinet into which items like milk, cheese and butter are placed. A cold pit, accessed via a trapdoor under the kitchen rug also provides a cool spot. In short, food storage is not an issue.

But how will we hang our clothes? In the right spots, juniper twigs have been whittled into natural hooks — far more handsome and appropriate than our store-bought versions.

Outside stones have been stacked into a fire pit that supports a grill that, in turn, will support this evening’s chicken.

Others matters of living? Off the mudroom a “bathroom” houses a composting toilet and a perfectly adequate shower for which we heat water.

But man does not live by machine alone. A dry arrangement of Reindeer lichen, heather and one solitary Cloudberry — perfectly appropriate to our spot on the mountain — grace a table in the sitting room.

A traditional Norwegian mountain horn, about four and a half feet long, wrapped in birch bark, hangs on the wall.

For all its comfort and ingenuity Mebu is not made for living in so much as for living out of, as a place from which to hike, to gather berries, to contemplate and enjoy the out-of-doors. At this time of year that means gathering berries — especially the much-prized cloud berries, solitary multi-globes of red/yellow deliciousness. The compound berry is about the size of a large raspberry, but the individual berries are much larger so that the whole berry includes only 8–10 of the smaller seed-bearing pods.

When harvested and cleaned they look like this:

Also the cranberry-tasting Titiberry, which in neighboring Sweden is called Lindenberry.

Here is a sample of one day’s harvest:

You will note blue berries, currants, raspberries and two kinds of plums. Not shown in this picture is a quart of chanterelle mushrooms, also gleaned from the wild.

Mebu is also a place from which to set off on expedition.

In the late morning we went off to an art gallery and to the “Sjokoladelaven”, (If you look carefully you will perhaps detect the English “Chocolate Barn”. On the way back we went hunting for Cloudberries, the delicious northern delicacies to which Ingre is clearly addicted — not so much to the eating as to the gathering.

Scattered along the forest floor are also stalks of Artic grass (which I learned as “Cotton Grass”), and lots of purple heather. This time of year one could well live off the land, Our hosts are masters at it: cloudberries, raspberries, chanterelle mushrooms, blue berries. And in their domestic garden: potatoes, currants, plums, etc..

Cabin living, however, requires more than just the “machine for living”; it requires an ability to be with yourself, a self-reliance, an ability to see what needs to be done and to do it, a good book, leisurely/confortable/honest conversation.

I live “off the beaten path”, but this cabin barely has a path at all. It is/was a lesson in living.