Nordic Reflections

As the slight rays of sun sink below the spruce tops and the snow & sky merge their hues of blue on this last day of the year, I too succumb to the mortal pull of reflection.



Taking advantage of today's heat wave (20 F), I went twice the distance through the forest. Part of me is disappointed that I have yet to make it to the next village. Another part luxuriates in the freedom of not measuring my way by normal criteria. One of the joys of being away from my routine is that I do not feel compelled to break everything up into measurable sections and I do not have to look at a calendar. In the woods I am free to be present in miniscule ways. I notice how the bark differs on the two types of pines. How the tufts of snow melt sporatically and fall from the treetops like little puffs of cotton candy. How the evergreen lingonberry punctuates the snowcover with hidden growth. And how the little prop plane above (the first I've seen or heard since Stockholm more than two weeks ago) reminds me that this is the 21st C and I am not alone in the woods.



This fantasy of how perhaps one could be grounded in the Nordic forest in the same way I felt atop one of the Mayan Temple ruins twenty years ago in Tikal (Guatemala) listening to the sounds of the howler monkeys is a blessing.

I reflect on how different the snow is today: wetter with the warmth and harder to ski on. Each day, the snow has a unique texture and sound and personality. Years ago, reading Smilla's Sense of Snow by the Danish writer, Peter Hoeg, I was impressed by the variety and amount of words the indigenous Greenlanders have for "snow." Now, I am similarily struck by how the Maya have a name for every part of the corn, the plant that gives them sustenance much as the forest does here in Sweden.



I have much gratitute for a life that permits me moments of relection. And with this time in the stillness and spare palette of the North, I have reclaimed the energy that fuels me to work so that more people have the opportunity to reflect and enjoy some beauty & peace.

Happy New Year! We have been invited to fireworks over Lake Siljan just before midnight...