Returning Home

We left Nesna on the same ferry that had carried us across the water from Levang. Standing near the stern, John kept his eyes fixed on Hugla until long after his old homestead disappeared from view.

There was a pensive look in his eyes that I had seen before when he stood at the side door of his barn looking out across the fields of the farm he had fashioned from stump-strewn marshland. Unlike the day he departed from Norway at the turn of the century, however, there was no eagerness or anticipation, only melancholy. From this journey to America there would be no return. He was looking at his childhood home for the last time.

I doubt he questioned the decision to emigrate. He had lived a full life and achieved all he set out to do.

So, if they wondered during his long absence, they knew now: his nephews, the hired girl, the ptarmigan and arctic hare, the troll, the old house, the birch tree, and even the mountain itself. Yes, he had returned to tell them, and they all knew now where he had been and what he had accomplished.

He had no regrets.