A touching trek

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This article was published 10/06/2023 (1192 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The cover photo of The Boy and The Mountain: A Father, His Son, and a Journey of Discovery speaks volumes about a child’s fragility and capability.

It features seven-year-old August, the “son” in the title, as snapped by his father, Norwegian author Torbjørn Ekelund. Standing at the edge of a prickly forest, he is a lone little figure, almost doubled in size by the knapsack he wears. Examining something in his hands, he seems oblivious to the craggy incline on which he balances. This is the “mountain” of the title. It is in Norway and named “Styggemann,” meaning “ugly man.” It is a formidable character.

Blink and you could imagine August wearing not a backpack but a jet pack, about to blast free from this blasted place. This hearkens to the “boy” of the title — someone else’s six-year-old son, Hans, who, some 120 years earlier, disappeared on the same mountain landscape.

In this walking narrative, Ekelund and August endeavour to climb Styggemann. At the same time, the surroundings have Ekelund imagining just what happened to Hans, the universal lost boy.

Through skilful storytelling interspersed with skimpy old articles and his own modern photos, Ekelund reveals Hans’ fate to the reader and speculates on the details. He is more reticent about telling August. Over their rugged five-day journey, where they encounter just one other person, he does not want to scare his son.

Ekelund is an experienced wilderness hiker. His walking experiments have been the subject of two other books that, like this one, were translated from Norwegian into English by Becky L. Crook. Free Press readers may recall Ekelund’s In Praise of Paths: Walking Through Time and Nature, reviewed in May 2020, where he explored the history and character of byways by trekking multiple Norwegian landscapes. In A Year in the Woods: Twelve Small Journeys into Nature, reviewed in the Free Press in October 2021, he described his monthly, daylong visitations to a forest outside Oslo, capturing nature’s changes over the year.

That the books’ English editions have not been released in chronological order is not problematic. (Small Journeys is the earliest, followed by Mountain, then Paths.) Ekelund’s worldview and considerations remain constant. Humans are but a small part of nature’s network. Nature does not care about us — take, for example, what happened to Hans. But it behooves us to care for nature for our own well-being.

When August was four years old, he participated in a chapter of Small Journeys, appropriately partaking in the August excursion into the woods. Now Ekelund takes him on a more daunting adventure, not knowing what August will remember but hoping to forge for them a meaningful father-son wilderness experience. Formative encounters with nature and the early teachings of parents and grandparents recur in Ekelund’s writings. The learning is close and personal.

Central to the book is the parental challenge of raising confident, self-reliant and responsible children amid everyday dangers and increasingly protective and urban environments. Here a father offers his son the best he can give — knowledge of, and reverence for, the natural world.

The satisfied reader trails along with them, privy to Ekelund’s fascinating musings — for example, the way young children typically navigate alpine environments when lost, the personality of 18th-century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus and the legend of the troll of Styggemann Peak.

The reader is also treated to Ekelund’s rich observations: “Some notable things we encounter along the way: a stick that looks like a human, an anthill that is taller than a boy, ripe blueberries…. The rhythm that rises when walking. The sense of all time ceasing.”

Ekelund’s wilderness know-how is rivalled by his understanding of young August’s character and abilities. The boy’s mood and attention shift as quickly as the mountain’s weather and terrain. Still, he joins his father in referring to a compass and reading a map (maybe with limited understanding). He shows interest in the GPS transmitter and, if necessary, can use a cellphone. This is no walk in the park after all.

Six years have passed since their journey of discovery when father and son successfully ascended Styggemann. August is now 13 years old. What would he have to say?

Gail Perry hopes to hike up Switzerland’s St. Bernard Pass this summer. She will not pass up any drinks from brandy-bearing pups.