Fishing with Chechnyans

by Carter McGrath (Denmark)

Making a local connection Norway

I have found myself daydreaming about travel recently. No, not about Seychelles beaches or Swiss Alps, but more about why we do it in the first place. Travel can broaden our horizons, opening us up to receive fresh ideas and ways of living. Yet, I have been in a bit of a travel rut. I find myself repeating the same old rituals in new cities. I’ll peruse a museum after enjoying a steaming coffee, get lost in the cobble-stoned old city, and have a pint while listening to locals proudly state why their city is better than the one I will be visiting next. A lot of people seem to travel this way, and while it is pleasurable, I suspect there is so much more to experience. I have decided to employ a new way of travel to interact with the individuals I would otherwise never encounter. To remedy my stagnant lack of growth, I have taken to the rural highways employing a sore thumb. My maiden voyage by thumb started in the Western fjords of Norway; wild enough to feel adventurous while having enough public transport options to offer security to my sheltered soul. From the coastal town of Haugesund, I desired to head north toward the metropolitan city of Bergen. How and when I would arrive was up to the road. Within a few minutes of standing next to a gas station with my thumb raised, a black luxury sedan allowed me to join their northward journey. The warm smell of fragrant leather wafted over me as I opened the door to my adventure. As we shook hands, my eyes traveled from palm to elbow and up to the olive skin surrounding deep brown eyes and a bushy black beard. He stated in Norwegian with an accent coming far from these fjords that he did not speak any English. I smiled, and in my broken Americanized Danish told him that we would manage just fine. I turned towards the backseat to greet the other passenger, a boy with eyelashes seemingly rimmed with kohl holding onto a thermos as large as he was small. “Will you have a coffee?” he asked. With my warm sugary coffee in hand, my host informed me that they were heading north and could take me as far as the fjord before Bergen. Perfect, that would give us at least an hour to travel together. I asked where he was from, to which he answered with some hesitancy that he came from Chechnya as a refugee in the early 2000’s. As he told me this, I noticed a large scar dripping like an icicle from his temple to the tip of his earlobe. To him, Chechnyan Nationalists were just as reprehensible as the Russians, for both groups had created the situation that forced him to leave. My host and I had both been traveling for different reasons. So far, I had traveled for the destination and for the experiences it offered. My host was forced to travel for his life and shaped his reality along the way. Soon, our destination was upon us as we drove in between two forested peaks into the mouth of an azure fjord. A ferry had just left as we pulled up, leading my host to light a cigarette and hand me a fishing pole from the trunk of his car. Together, the boy and I set the hook into the deep blue endlessness of the fjord, hoping for a salmon on the other end of the line. Although we caught no salmon that day I was able to find something better than a fish, in a fellow traveler allowing me to experience a completely different way of traveling. For some, travel is an escape from the mundanity of everyday life. My host traveled for a safer future. I no longer travel for the destination but for the people I meet along the way. There is no one way to be a traveler and learning the different dimensions to why we do so has taught me that there is much more to it than steaming coffee or a pint at the end of the day.