Steering an impossible huge and heavy van across the plains of Western Finland, I try to shut out the chatter of my travelling companion and dream of Prince Charming.Icy roads are okay as long as there is snow on the fields and forests to add a shimmer to an otherwise bleak landscape. I keep an eye out for elk and deer and try to decide on a radio station. The van is loaded with books but smells of apples and winter. My fingers are numb with cold and I turn up the heater a notch.
Sleepy villages and towns pass by with their wooden cottages and ugly '60s blocks. An occasional tractor blocks the road. Even here, in the middle of nowhere, people have chosen to live, even here there are schoolyards with laughing children. Imagine.
There will be no sun today either, and darkness is falling as we head home in the late afternoon. I slow down and turn on the full headlights. My shoulders are aching from the driving and from carrying heavy book cases in the cold but I am served coffee out of a thermos and life seems suddenly quite allright. I am driving through winter and I can smell the sleeping fields and the resin of the woods, and oh how beautiful is this country I am in.
2 comments:
the winter lights - beacons of humanity amid endless bleakness.
the picture you have painted (and taken) is cold and stern, but has it's flashes of beauty as well.
Dreary winter mornings usually end in a bottle of warm[ing] beverage, and lively spring evenings terminate in hot summer mornings.
It's funny how you, on the other side of the world, hope for summers while I hope for winters. :)
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