going home, when you live in Finland

Going home, when you live in Finland, often means driving long distances through dark forests.

I used to lie in the backseat of my father's car, a long long time ago, and look at the winter night sky through the window. Treetops flickered past at its edges, yellowish street lights when we passed through a village. The stars stayed still, far above in the inky sky. The air smelled sweetly of wood smoke from cottages we passed. The road was icy and my father drove slowly, looking out for elks. My mother talked in a low voice, the dog slept on the floor. Hot air blasted from the vents but the chill crept in and I pulled my coat tightly around me. 

I thought about my grandmother, who we had just been to see, and aunts and cousins I had met at her house. Their lives and that place in the countryside seemed so far away. The quiet farmhouse that smelled of old wood, the wide and open fields around it, the ticking of an ancient clock, the memories of relatives long dead, the peaceful and very alive presence of nature. Almost like a fairytale. 

Sometimes I felt I had been abducted from that life that I'd never known, plucked from the embrace of doting aunts and lively cousins, forced into a suburban life among cold strangers and harsh demands.

Now I gladly leave the urban lights of the large cities in the south to travel home, along a winding road through the darkest and wildest of forests. Towards the north of the North. The road narrows with the hours that pass, signs with strange names flash by. 

The stars appear, the wood smoke, the old cottages. The sight of empty fields against a backdrop of spruces that always quiets my heart. Wilderness stretching from here to the Arctic Ocean. I'm going home.