Underland: A Deep Time Journey

by Robert Macfarlane

A bay of black-gold sand, bound by marram, angled from the base of ice-lined cliffs. Rain falling, then hail again. Forest of birch and willow with a six-foot canopy. Birch bark gleaming in the light, first buds bursting furred on the willows. Up and over crag and boulder to a headland shoulder, each step sore now, the wind colder. Pack heavy, head heavy, throat chilled, body older. Headland after headland, until there at last to the west is the bay and beyond it, perhaps, the vent of the cave. Green sea over white shell-sand in the bay. Guard-arms of rock curving out and around to either side, the bay water calm, though the outer ocean by the Maelstrom is in chaos. Five sharp-coned summits rising steep from the shore to the peak called Hellsegga, each higher than the last. From the top of each flows a white plume of cloud, bent flatter to the east, and there, there, set low in the belly of one is the black vault of a cave. ~ Boom of waves on the offshore reefs. Two sea eagles circling, unmoved by the wind, silent. Ping ping of crow-cries sounding steel off the cliffs. Croak of a raven. I reach the north side of the bay below Hellsegga – named on the map as Refsvika Bay – exhausted, excited. It has taken me more than an hour to move each mile over this exceptionally obstructive terrain. On raised ground I find what seems a good place to pitch camp. It is exposed if the wind were to swing to the north, but that is its only serious vulnerability. Two big boulders give shelte...