How I finally met the man who saved my life!

I’ve just had one of the biggest weeks of my life. I turned 30, submitted my masters thesis, moved out of my house and traded an amazing Phinney Ridge view for the vagabond life. And to top it all off, on Saturday I finally met the man who saved my life!

It’s fitting to start my travels in Boston – to come ‘home’ to a place from my past. I visited friends in Cambridge and met my undergraduate thesis advisor, Ted Macdonald, for coffee. I wanted to say thank you Ted, once again for your guidance 9 years ago, and for writing those recommendations that got me the Fulbright and accepted to grad school. I hope I’ve done you proud!

My godmother, Brita, picked me up and whisked me away to Newton, MA, which was my home away from home during college. I’ve spent the Easter weekend with Brita, Gary and Tali eating amazing food (including matzo brei, roast lamb and apple pie), hiking in the Blue Hills, and catching up on the details of our lives.

Saturday I took a side-trip to Vermont to visit a Norway Fulbright friend on his farm. Matthew Hoffman spent most of his 20s learning how to be a farmer, and then decided to go back to school for his Ph.D. He studies common property regimes, community development and land use. What he does is called natural resource sociology. After he finished his masters he took a few years off to remodel the farmhouse on his family’s land, and while he worked on his Ph.D. he built an exquisite barn using timber he’d cleared from the property. He took me on a walk through the pastures, forest and his grove of sugar maples, following the tracks of a wild turkey until they disappeared into flight.

My hope for Matthew is that he can find an amazing and satisfying teaching job close enough to home that he can stay on his farm and fill the barn with animals once more!

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Once, during my year in Norway, Matthew and I were sitting at a bar with several other Fulbrighters, and the conversation turned to bears. Most people have a bear story, and we all love telling them. Having grown up in Southeast Alaska, I’ve got a few. There’s the one about the morning I woke up to the sound of the bear dragging my kayak down the beach, and the endless problems of bears rifling through garbage cans. But I told my favorite: the one about the time Tom Bodett saved my mother and me (in utero) from a bear attack! She was running outside of Petersburg, the town where I grew up, when a black bear began loping directly toward her across the muskeg. She stopped and screamed, but luckily a pick-up truck rounded the bend. Tom, a local carpenter, was at the wheel. He saw the scene unfolding and hit the gas, arriving just in time to drive between the bear and my mom, deflecting the charge. Breathless, she clambered into the cab…

“Have you ever heard of Tom Bodett?” I asked the crowd? “You know, the voice of Motel 6? ‘I’ll leave the light on for ya.’ I think he also appears regularly on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell me! Yup, he saved my life!”

Matthew looked at me funny. “Tom Bodett?”

“Yeah… have you heard of him?”

“Uh, Tom Bodett is my next door neighbor in Vermont. He’s looking after my farm for me right now…”

“What?!!”

You see, Tom had moved away from Petersburg in 1982. He'd spent some time in Homer, AK where he'd gotten his first big break in the radio scene, and eventually he'd moved East to pursue that career. I had never met him, and didn't think I ever would!

Matthew and I wrote a letter to Tom Bodett, in which I was finally able to express my gratitude. “Thank you, Tom,” I wrote, “for saving my life. Without you, I wouldn’t be in Norway studying wild salmon restoration!”

But still I had never been able to thank him in person. On Saturday Matthew and I stopped to knock on Tom’s door. I expected him to be off somewhere recording a radio show, but we caught him at home. He was delighted to meet me. He says he tells the story often! And now, 30 years later, the story goes on!

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This trip is about integrating pieces of my life, about celebration and reflection, and about re-connection. And just pure and simple vacation, too!

After Boston I’m heading to Maine to spend a week with Sarah and Pete helping out on their farm (http://www.smallwonderorganics.com/). Then I’ll dip into big city life in New York before flying to Europe. I’ll be returning to Bergen, Norway for 1 month where I’ll live with my third cousin, Marta Kristin, and do some work for my employer and friend from my Fulbright year, Bjorn Barlaup. I’ll also visit friends in Germany and Spain before heading home to Seattle at the end of June.

I figure this old blog about my Fulbright year in Norway can be expanded to include the present adventures of this Norwegian-American girl! Stay tuned!