Polar night, fire and stars

Lapland polar night

My first experience polar night was as a wilderness guide trainee the winter before last.

It's not dark in here, I was surprised!

Coastal fellside, snowmobiling for the first time - in –30 Celsius below zero, of course.

River Deatnu, the Sámi river under the ice cover, the first faint northern lights I ever saw.

The cold magic of the Arctic Ocean and the tension over the fate of cross-border tourism in the face of the Covid -19 pandemic.

Reindeer and husky tours.

Teaching skiing and snowshoeing to tourists.

The symbolism of standing on the threshold of my new life, at the turn of a new year, in the middle of a border river.

Soothing living flame

The magic and reassurance of crackling fire captivated me even as a scout.

I love to light candles, incense, lanterns, any kind of fire, and stare endlessly at the play of the flames.

I have only recently learned that many of my normal activities in nature have been what is now called meditation or mindfulness. Heating the sauna and the ritual of washing, swimming in the lake, fishing, berry picking and mushroom picking, cottage chores with watering and halo chopping, gardening, watering the lawn on a summer evening. Finnish meditation.

What's behind the stars?

I have always been fascinated not only by the deep sea but also by space, the cosmos, its infinity, its unexploredness. For these reasons, sci-fi and space movies have probably been my favourites.

My father and I used to go to the unlit playground to look at the stars when I was a child, and I learned about the Big Dipper and the North Star.

I remember a moment as a child, standing in my nightdress in our backyard on a bright, cold winter night, looking up at the stars. In that moment, my nothingness was revealed to me once and for all. I feared that if I looked up too long, gravity would release its grip on me and I would be hurled into space, alone in the cold forever. I quickly fled indoors, a little shocked. The everyday activities of my parents seemed somehow banal on a cosmic scale. For a long time, it seemed that no one else in my friends or close circle was probably thinking about such big things. And where the world had come from and why we were here.

But that's another story.