through a storm and almost to Sweden

I have made it something of a life principle. To leave Finland at least once a year for a trip to foreign lands. Sometimes it has been only a quick nip across the border to Stockholm or Tallinn (panicking, in December) or a visit to my second home Ireland which is not really a foreign land, but still.

I boast about doing this for the last thirty years, with an exception for the year I grieved for my father and couldn't seem to make it anywhere.

Last year, the time had come for an epic journey to Italy. Needless to say, the pandemic had other plans. Even this year, it didn't seem wise to do anything more than a couple of staycations. After all, Finland has plenty to see.

But I did get to cross an international border, thanks to my employer who took the work team on a mini-cruise across the pond to the Swedish city of Umeå. We didn't actually go ashore, there wasn't time. But I got to see the Swedish coast, which was being lashed by a heavy storm and icy rain. It felt like a victory after a year and a half of closed borders. 

The ferry is small but brand-new and boasts of being the latest in green technology. It has the most lavish and delicious seafood buffet I have ever experienced. Fortunately, I had worked my way through the caviar, salmon and prawn cakes to the sea buckthorn parfaits and white chocolate mousses of the dessert table before the storm started to toss the boat too seriously. I had also had my fill of letting my hair fly loose in the gales on the "sun" deck and breathing in the cold, salty air, with the exhilaration that only comes in the middle of a storm on the open sea.

I managed to win a quiz despite near-seasickness - my boss and I tied for first place - and then retired to the cozy bar for a white russian and some dozing. So this was my foreign adventure in 2021. Could Italy be much better? I doubt it.

last night, and all the stars are there

Just as it was getting a little too cold for another weekend in the summer cottage, I went back there one more time. 

My addiction made me go. Addiction to the silence of the old fir trees, silvery and dripping with cold rain, and to the hooting of swans gathered in the darkening bay.

The grass and the alder trees were going grey, looking weary and old. Birches were turning a cold lemon colour. The sea had the unforgiving shade of chilly steel, making me shiver just to look at it.

I did a bit of work, huddled up under a scratchy blanket with my laptop and feeding firewood into the stove. I pulled on a thick hoodie and cleared away the remnants of the bonfire we had on the beach the weekend before, the end-of-summer weekend. I read a novel, solved a few crosswords, wrote a little fiction, and slept the sleep of the blessed as the night chill crept back into the cottage.

That intense solitude, far from other people, never really feels like loneliness. But there is an aching melancholia in the autumn stillness when birds leave and everything goes to sleep for a long, frozen winter, when all life withdraws into a tiny core that is hard to see or hear. So I was delighted when my sister showed up on the second day.

That night was one of the highlights of the year, better even than the balmy summer evenings we have spent together in the same environment. Perhaps because of the September darkness, which descends so unforgivingly with absolute blackness and turns the cottage into a tiny beacon of light and warmth at the edge of a vast and unknown space.

We pooled our resources of chocolate, crisps, nuts and melon slices, uncorked a large bottle of sparkling lemon water. Then we squeezed into a narrow single bed to watch National Treasure, a favourite movie, on the laptop. Outside, the night was a black abyss but the fire spread a comforting warmth and the dog snored at our feet.

Before retiring to our own beds, we went down to the beach at midnight. We turned off the flashlight and let our bodies adjust to the icy darkness.

All the stars in the universe frolicked around us. The bay had gone still and invisible, ringed by forests. The atonal hooting of the many swans nearby turned into a concert of flutes and oboes and bassoons, its echoes travelling five miles to the opposite shore and returning unhindered, waves upon waves. A goose or two inserted a raspy contribution. Something that went unseen and unheard by us suddenly scared all these large birds and hundreds of them took flight at once. We could see nothing in the darkness and just gasped at the eerie sound of heavy feathers beating the air, as if the timpanist of this odd orchestra had suddenly got into his thunderous solo.

We retired to warm beds and happy dreams. When welcoming the autumn, it's best to do it with a sister.