Torbjorn Ekelund, The Boy and the Mountain: A Father, His Son, and a Journey of Discovery (Greystone Books, 2023).

The Boy and the Mountain was originally published in Norwegian in 2017 and translated into English in 2023. Ekelund has, thus far, published two fine books that weave, thoughtfully and delicately together, the layered relationship between humans and nature: In Praise of Paths and A Year in the Woods. There is a meditative approach that shapes and defines Ekelund’s writing style, and such a tendency is front and center in The Boy and the Mountain.

There are a variety of suggestive layers at work in The Boy and the Mountain and the interweaving of such layers makes this missive inviting and evocative. There is the story of a young child (six years of age) who wandered from his mother in a backcountry and mountainous in southern Norway (near Kongsberg) in the Skrim area, lost his way, and was found dead—such was the fate of Hans Torske when he disappeared July 8 1894 and was found July 29 1895. It is this mysterious death of Hans that is constantly, like a stream, running through the mind of Ekeland as he takes to the same area with his son (August) for a father and son trek to, in principle, the summit of Styggemann mountain. But, what is the significance of mother and son taking to the backcountry, father in the city, Hans innocently leaving mother, then disappearing, lost in the woods, disoriented, many in the area searching for him, when found a year later dead? This is certainly a tale of poorly prepared trips and treks into nature, a child acting in a spontaneous and creative manner, nature quite indifferent to such a choice, no sense of how to orient or find his way back to his mother, then being lost and nature taking its inevitable toll—certainly no nature romanticism, those unprepared and unaware often victims of nature’s ways and means. So, the tale of Hans is the warning and backdrop to the hike of father and son.