Hyttetur

 My father-in-law has an encyclopedic knowledge of things to do in the outdoors, but then again, so does my own father. Maybe this is something that happens around age 50; one finally accumulates all the ways to cut up your hands or skin your knees. At 30, I'm aware of a few, but I must be missing slightly less than half.

When Michael has had a few beers, he gets nostalgic, starts telling about all the things that he used to do. It is never clear as to when he's ceased these activities or even if he'd ever stopped, but he always says, “we used to...” then whets my appetite for adventure, but usually fish; his stories usually involve them.

It was on one of these nights, when he began waxing upon his adventures at Onkel Stein's cabin, fishing and crabbing. He will never admit it, but I believe he enjoys having a man in the house that isn't the dog. Not that my wife is dainty or adventure-negative—she may even be more masculine than myself—but it's just not the same. In addition, I'm a foreigner and have a great lack of essential Norwegian experiences. So whenever Michael says, “we used to...” I can be expected to get wet at some point in the near future.

The next day, he called up Stein, booked us a night at his cabin and purchased some special crabbing apparatus. He described it as if it were the pinnacle of crab engineering, but in reality, it wasn't much more than a metal triangle on a stick with some chicken wire strung across the bottom. I wasn't expecting to eat many crabs when I saw it.

We loaded up the truck with sleeping bags and fishing rods, wellington boots and rain gear, and a couple pairs of wool socks. Of course we also needed two cases of beer. At the last minute, we decided some food would be good as well. When all was packed, we ventured off on our hyttetur.

Most families in Norway own a cabin (or hytte in Norwegian) and many own two, one in the mountains and one by the sea. The Troye's didn't but knew people who did. And thankfully Onkel Stein was usually willing to allow guests at his family's cabin. He technically wasn't anybody in the family's uncle; he's Michelle's mother's ex-brother-in-law, but close enough to keep the name. I had been to the cabin before, earlier that summer for some drunken merriment, but there were no crabs involved in that trip. It was located about 45 minutes out of town, on one of the barrier islands of Bergen's fjord. If you need a pop culture reference, you could say it was located in the heart of the Iron Islands. The area is lovely, with rocky cliffs jutting out of the sea next to gentle bumps above the water, as if some god-child left all his stone toys in the bath. The cabin was also nice, both cosy and warm with a giant, unnecessary color television; it was pushing the line from cabin to second home, but we still had to crap in a hole.

Beer were popped open almost before the car was unloaded and after the second, we donned our rain gear and hit the fjord for some fishing. In Minnesota, fishing usually involves rods and fancy spinning contraptions and slidy thingabobs and often some slimy living thing. Michael had most of these things, but Michelle and I were assigned 200 yard of fishing line on a wood spool, with five hooks connected to tiny plastic red dots they called tyttebær, or lingonberries. I skeptically dropped the line in, let it fall to the bottom and within minutes, I felt some tension. I pulled it up and there were three tiny mackerel. The next dip yielded five more. This was hardly fishing, but I couldn't argue with the results. We caught about 30 small fish, slightly bigger than perch, then gutted them all when we returned to shore.

We warmed up at the hytte and Michael called his wife. He was missing his dog and we had a marked lack of whiskey. She was enjoying a relaxing evening in an empty house, but decided in the end to join us on our escape from the city.

The five of us finished dinner and a flat of beer, then around midnight, we put on a heavier set of rain clothes, threw our crabbin' stick into the boat with some flashlights and headed out into the fjord again.

It was a still, dark night, not much wind and mild currents, perfect conditions for snagging clawed creatures. In the Autumn in Norway, the crabs begin to fatten up from their diets of barnacles and whatever else they can find. The best time to go is at the peak of high tide, when the water levels remain constant for a short one-hour window. We brought our boats to the edge of a steep mountain wall, killed the engine, then inched along by fingertips while Michael hung out the front with a headlamp and his crabrake. The crabs usually relax about 3 feet below the surface, but quickly dive once spot-lighted. So one has to quickly dip the rake below it and coral the crab up to the surface. Once out of water, they grasp onto anything they can find—to our advantage, chicken wire suffices—then you throw them into the boat, making sure you don't hit anyone on the head or tempt their claws with your wife's nose. Michelle and I then took our turns, slowly filling up the bucket. By the end, we all had sore fingers, a couple bruises on our chests, and about 50 fat crabs. The current picked up around 1:30, as did the rain, so we called it a night, headed back to the “crabin” (hehe) and tossed the crabs into some wood traps filled with seaweed so they didn't eat each other. We then crawled into our sleeping bags and drifted to sleep to the sound of the ocean breeze shaking the house.

The next evening, we had a feast, or rather Michael and I did—Michelle and her mother aren't big on crabs. I spent nearly two hours cracking shells, stuffing my face with pieces of meat the size of a q-tip head. It was a lot of trouble; I cut up my hand quite a bit, but few things are as delicious as your own hard work. The leftovers were mixed with lemon juice and mayonnaise to be spread on bread over the next few days.

Later that night Michael told us that he used to set out nets in the lake behind the house and catch hundreds of tiny fish that are divine when smoked and so the next day he started patching the holes in the leaky boat that lives in the front yard. My rain gear and taste buds are already prepared.