protect his household. He’d thought about reaching for his flashlight and rifle in case the thing came near, but then he’d remembered Erik mentioning that the wolf population in this region was all but obliterated. A lone wolf had been spotted once or twice, but it was likely one of few left, if not the only one, thanks to the government’s culling program. If a wolf was howling, it was trying to find its pack.
Tom had felt sorry for that wolf. He finds himself listening now for it. His ear tuning to that same howl that echoes in his own head.
He stubs out his cigarette, goes to his office. It’s difficult to switch off these days. Aurelia’s Nest is constantly on his mind. He pours a glass of red, flicks on the office light, and stands before his easel. There’s a note to himself written in pencil at the top corner and circled a number of times: macrocosm. A reminder to think about how the project fits into the bigger picture of Norway.
Right before Aurelia died he was feeling conflicted about Norway’s eco-politics. He loves Norway, and not just because his wife’s family were born here. It was the first country to ban deforestation. Given the very visible effects of climate change—colder summers, milder winters, and the landslide of consequential ecological effects—Norway made the Arctic its number one foreign policy priority as early as 2005. The Norwegian parliament pledged to make the country climate neutral by 2030. Yet there are many unfortunate countermeasures. The government’s troubling mismanagement of natural resources, for instance. Whale hunting. The opening up of the Arctic for oil and gas extraction. The reckless culling of natural wildlife, particularly wolves.
A growing number of architects and construction companies are embedding activism into their practice, some of them engaged in building projects with the sole purpose of upending the hypocritical policies that are preventing Norway from taking a proper stand against climate change. The world is literally at stake; at this moment California is burning a slow but inevitable death. Last night, another tsunami took out an entire city on the other side of the world. Norway, a country formed by numerous ice ages, is on the verge of yet another.
The thought of this makes him think about the river. He could write a book. How Damming a River Ruined My Life. He chides himself for being so melodramatic. Be rational. It was an oversight on his part to think he could easily redirect something that had flowed naturally for hundreds of years. He read something recently about the role a single river, even a very small one, plays in supporting ecosystems, and he felt very naïve. The engineer Ragnar had been right. He really should have foreseen the effects it would have on the landscape, even on the animals.
“Knock, knock.”
Clive comes in. Tom continues to draw on the easel. He’s rethinking some of the elements of the build—he’s never been one to care too much about getting the design carved into stone, as it were, preferring to remain fluid about the final product right up until the last minute, and usually after.
Clive, though—he’s a planner. He watches Tom make changes to the plans, the plans they’ve already approved with the surveyor and construction team, the plans for which they’ve got actual consent and to which they are legally obliged to adhere. He shakes his head with a rueful sigh.
“So what you changing now, then?” he says, picking up Tom’s glass of wine and sipping from it, just like they did as postgrads at Glasgow School of Art. Tom draws two lines down through the cliff and adds a box. This famous lift they’ve been discussing for all eternity. It’s one thing to decide your new home is going to be built on the side of a cliff, quite another to figure out how you’re going to get groceries down there. He’s keen to see how Tom’s going to hold on to his principles with this one. His guess is—he won’t.
“You’ve got to install a lift into the cliff in order to reach the new house. How’re you going to do that without explosives, hmm? Unless you’re planning on parachuting down there? Maybe a laundry chute?”
“The lift isn’t going into the cliff,” he tells Clive, tapping the new addition on the easel. “It’s going outside it. Fifteen feet from the rock face, to be exact.” He gets out his calculator, works out the dimensions required. He has the exact