Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl

My grandmother died about two years ago. She was the daughter of immigrant farmers from Norway. My grandpa is still alive, but he told all of the rest of us to take what we want from the house, and I discovered a few books that I wanted. Among them a Norwegian phrase book. This summer I perused it a little, picking up a few handy words and sentences. Languages fascinate me, and the fact that Norway is a part of my own personal heritage makes Norwegian all the more interesting.

When my parents were visiting me in August I mentioned my interest in Norway and how I would like to visit there someday, but how I didn't know what there was in Norway to see or do. I couldn't think of any historically important landmarks, nor globally famous Norwegian people. My dad mentioned Thor Heyerdahl. He had read Kon-Tiki thirty years ago and some other works of his and you could tell that my dad was enamored. My mom too noticed this interest in my dad, and we both found it remarkable because my dad is not a reader of books. My whole life, I can't ever remember him reading a book. My mom tells me that he read a few things by C.S. Lewis which changed his life, but beyond that I would be hard pressed to think of anything he has read at all. Until the subject of Thor Heyerdahl came up.

The next time I was at my parents' house I searched the basement for books and didn't find Kon-Tiki but rather The Ra Expeditions, which I borrowed. About a week after that I was at the Ramsey County Public Library's annual used book sale at the Roseville branch, where I picked up a dozen or so great bargains including Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki for fifty cents. Hardcover, published by Rand McNally, 1950.

I read it slowly, but only because I was savouring it. It was captivating. Very few books are page-turners like this was, but the chapters just flew by in awe and wonder. Every page contained some new thrilling adventure. It was magnificent. It wasn't necessarily a literary masterpiece, something to set the world on fire like Jack Kerouac's On The Road or J.D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye. But it was real. These things actually happened. It didn't have to be emotionally wrenching -- it was fact.

I haven't told my dad yet that I've read it, but I will soon. I looked Thor Heyerdahl up in my 2001 World Almanac, and it didn't have any information on him. But he was in my American Heritage College Dictionary, where it said he was born in 1914 but didn't list a year of death. "He could still be alive!" I marvelled. I could have written him a fan letter to let him know that his Kon-Tiki adventure thrilled me over fifty years later, I thought. But I got online and discovered that he did this last April. That made me very sad. Three months ago I had never even heard of him. Now he's one of my heroes.