Dear Inger

A Minha Querida Tiger Queen:

I can’t believe it’s been six years since I visited you up on the top of the earth. You picked me up from the Tromsø airport in your grandmother’s 1980-something blue hatchback, and we listened to Norwegian Leonard Cohen covers while you drove us North along the fjords. You stopped so I could take a picture of a moose and again so I could really breathe in the sea air. Your dad showed me a film about the Sami and the reindeer when we got to your house.

Seeing where you grew up made everything click. You’re magnetic, electric. Of course you are. You were formed by the midnight sun and the auroras, by cloudberries and reindeer. You carry the force of the Arctic everywhere you go. It’s clearly part of you and your darling parents. You are strength, magic, adventure, and resilience.

You taught me to love hiking and not to fear getting lost in the rainforests around Rio de Janeiro. I could not keep up with you on those hikes. It seemed like you didn’t even have to look down at your feet to make your way up and down the steep and unknown trails while I slid down the wet rocks on my butt. I wouldn’t have made it to the top of the Morro Dois Irmãos without you, Inger!

Several years later and on the opposite side of the world, you took me on even more breathtaking hikes. Your mom lent me some fishnet long underwear to trap the heat under all the other layers, and you gave me an extra mosquito netted baseball cap. Who would guess that there are more mosquitos in Norway than in Brazil! Your cousin took us up the shallow river in his boat until we got to the waterfalls (all of those Brazilian men told me they would show me a waterfall, but it was you that finally did!), and we hiked all night along the same river until we got back to your parents’ house to drink some chilled white wine and feast on crispbread and cloudberry jam with brown cheese while we wrapped ourselves in heavy blankets. You told me about the key your dad has to the communal cabins in the national parks and how you can cross country ski deep into the park towing your necessities on a sled behind you to spend some winter nights all alone. Even though the sun never set, I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold. At the same time, I've never cared less about being cold. That’s the night that I started embracing the cold and seeing the magic in it. You taught me how to be present first when I was so frustrated in a tropical climate that my toenail fell off, but even more so on a cold and sunny arctic night.

We were always on the same page about packing extra snacks or stopping for extra meals and knowing where to find the cleanest toilets to ‘send a fax’ near campus. Is that how our friendship started? I really can’t remember. Maybe it was in Portuguese class or over a (few) caipirinha(s). Or maybe it was fate signaled by our old-lady Scandinavian names. All I know is that whenever I think about Rio de Janeiro, I think about you: beaches and riptides, night clubs and pool parties, rodizios, salsichao covered in farofa, unbearably air conditioned bus rides and humid hikes, steaming bowls of moqueca and bobo, shopping for swimsuits, bikini waxes and official letters about them, and always a caipirinha.

I just wanted to tell you that I think about you often and still feel your força wherever in the world you may be.

Keep flexing, tiger queen. I could dedicate an entire paragraph to the enviable biceps you acquired from surfing, but I won’t. I love you, my Northern Light!

-Brita