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Morning on the ICE

Sunday, December 11th, 2011

Morning on the ICE in Sweden

It’s a Sunday morning on the ICE. Were I in Sweden, it might have been possible to physically be on the ice, but here in northern Germany global warming has seen to it that there is no ice in early December. Instead the Inter City Express train shoots us through the flat, culturally-conditioned landscape. In Sweden we are still used to wildernesses. Here there are none. Still, there are mini-forests occupying small patches and straight lines dividing the fields, where man considers they should be.

In this land, the wind mills rise high above the earth in great clusters. Use of wind power is not a debate, it is a fact here, where the winds blow strong and unhindered across the flat landscape, and where people have recognized that it’s smart to go to the skies for power. In Sweden, people have debated about where to put the wind parks. Won’t they destroy our landscape? For myself, I think they are beautiful. Unfortunately, my back yard at home isn’t big enough for one. Perhaps this could be a suggestion for the king who lives across the road from me and has a bit more space in his back yard at Drottningholm.

At the train station I sat waiting for the ICE in front of a gigantic H&M billboard. Strangely, the models sporting the best of affordable Swedish clothing design looked Asian. I had expected that they would look more northern German, but it seems that we have come into a time when appearance frequently has nothing to do with nationality. Standing in a German train station where once the swastikas would have hung where the billboards are today, this feels like some of the most important progress we could be making as a species.

Out in the shopping mall next to the train platforms a young man outside The Body Shop entices women to try the latest body butter. It is interesting the way that global brands make you feel at home wherever you are. Whatever the challenges to local industry created by globalization, it is reassuring to know that humans can at times agree about tastes and smells. The globalization of this zone of life, tastes and smells, doesn’t seem to have reduced diversity either. Bratwurst, like smörrebröd or sill has simply been lifted out of its German, Danish or Swedish box into a globally accessible range of ideas about food. I like the thought.

As the ICE heads south, ice becomes ever less likely. Once we reach our destination, we’ll be somewhere at the Black Forest, just across from the French border. There I’ll be able to disembark and sniff at the air, hopefully to notice the smell of crepes from the cafes across the border.
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Wondering what to give a friend or loved one for Christmas? Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island. Order it now from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk , Author House, authorhouse.co.uk and many other online bookstores. Other books by Julie Lindahl available are: Letters from the Island (listen also to Julie’s podcasts from this site) and On My Swedish Island: Discovering the Secrets of Scandinavian Well-being.

Julie Lindahl is chairperson at Stories for Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to learning and communication through storytelling.

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Tags: Germany, ice, train, travel, Winter
Posted in Season, Winter | No comments »

A peculiar execution

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011

What thoughts are being born amidst the trees?

Golden layers fall from the trunk like a ball gown. Their pattern brings tears to the eyes of any artist or designer who has observed, been inspired and tried to replicate. Some come close, like insects dancing toward the light. Yet, the sweet tragedy of all great art, and indeed the quality that draws us to it, is the longing to portray a vision or a feeling that we’ve internalized and, at best, always just coming close.

Autumn in the North, with its overbearing beauty and dramatic happenings, is full of this sweet tragedy for me. During sunny, crisp mornings in the park with Lucy the dog the desire to describe what I see flows forth in words that I just cannot keep up with. They pass through my thoughts and seem to fly right back out into the golden waterfalls of leaves, and wash away into the gutters next to the sunlit paths. At the same time, being able to retain just a small portion of this inspiration, which I believe I do, makes all of the difference to me. Just a tiny droplet of it can shape my day, my thoughts, my attitude, and the way that I relate to other people. This is no small matter.

Autumn’s sweet tragedy began to turn sour when I noticed in the Sunday paper that there is a planned execution in Stockholm on Monday morning. At some time tomorrow, which is likely being kept a secret for fear of the Robin Hoods of nature conservation hijacking the event, an oak that is several hundred years old, and that preceded all of the modern structures that stand around it, will be felled. Symbolically, the base of the oak is now entombed under the cement of the pavement in front of the Swedish public television station’s building.

Apparently it’s got a fungal disease and is a risk to passersby. We have to be realistic – it’s just a tree, some say. Yet, if one thinks about how many artists, thinkers and others this tree has inspired to new heights – how many thoughts this tree has impacted over time - one begins to appreciate the magnitude of what is about to happen. This sort of tree has not only been our witness, it has been a creator of history and culture over many hundreds of years.

It seems ironic that in this International Year of Forests in which Sweden is celebrating trees as both a part of our outer and inner worlds, the old oak which has seen us through so much has to go. If this was an elderly person, we’d do everything to learn whatever we could from it before he or she passed away. If it was a famous artist, a movie star or other celebrity, we’d be honoring it at galas. A tree is not a person, but there is a good reason why trees occupy a special place in the cultural life of this part of the world. They’ve shaped the way that we think. Observing a very old tree is more than just nostalgia or nature appreciation, it’s living history.

As I pass down the linden alley, I smile upon the youngsters. I’m older than many of these trees. It’s cheerful to be able to enjoy their soft and slender youth. Yet, in the gnarled forms and deep grooves of an old tree is the inspirational and intellectual heritage of a people. Perhaps, for these very special trees we’ve felt forced to fell, a ceremony of remembrance should be organized. Undoubtedly, this would be the sign of a society with greater self-insight than the one that we live in today.

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Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island. Other books by Julie Lindahl available are: Letters from the Island (listen also to Julie’s podcasts from this site) and On My Swedish Island: Discovering the Secrets of Scandinavian Well-being.

Julie Lindahl is chairperson at Stories for Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to learning and communication through storytelling.

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Tags: culture, execution, heritage, trees
Posted in Autumn, Conservation, Flora, Outdoor Activity, Park, Season, Walking, nature | 4 comments »

The magical corners of September

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

Magic in September

In the corner of my garden shines the light of mid-September. It is steadfast in its magic, holding the warmth of the summer gone by, even as the leaves begin to rustle on the ground, and threaten with darkness and cold. Here in this gentle corner, the angel trumpets emerge out of light green pods, sauropods of plants, that are barely believable in their likeness to something that an angel could sound to the heavens with. They emerge lemon-yellow, harmonizing with the warm, lemon-yellow facade of the house just behind them.

As I sit on the bench against the wall next to the angel trumpets, all of life is drawn into this small corner. This is all. Things don’t get any better and there is a certain magic in being able to appreciate that, whatever the woes of the day.

I shut my eyes and think of the other magical corners of my neighborhood in September. A birch-carved bench has been donated by one of the neighbors, and stands under a tree on the side of the road. It was given to this neighbor on his 75th birthday, and he decided to share it with all who needed a place to sit, by placing it in the patch of grass by the dirt road. Next to this bench, which I have passed so many times on walks with Lucy the dog, there is a basket which remains there until the frost comes. It is there for anyone who has an oversupply of apples, pears or plums from their trees, to share them with those who occupy the bench. On some days there is just one apple left, and one imagines that someone has been to sit on the bench, eat the fruit and experience the magic. The imagination that this corner provokes makes it special. On others, the basket is refilled with a multitude of pears and apples from the neighborhood, ready for eating by anyone needing a rest at the bench. There is a magic in leaving the fruit there too: having the foresight to share oversupply with another requires not only a spark of empathetic thought, but also the will to act upon it.

Beyond the dock on the other side of the hill, the water holds its temperature despite the call of the air to cool. Swimming in the gentle rain in the mornings, one shares this vast expanse of water only with a couple of ducks, which quickly head for the reeds, leaving only the droplets from the sky striking the smooth surface of the water at eye level. As I look beyond the droplets, I see the leaves changing and falling, yet the water is still a friend and doesn’t leave me with a chill on early morning swims. While no one would regard this vast expanse of water a ‘corner,’ I think of i it as one of my places of magic in the neighborhood this September.

As the ‘love herb’ (I prefer this Swedish name of Hylotelephium telephium) that has been green all summer changes to red, I know that my magical corners will have to be relinquished to the autumn soon. They’ll just have to occupy the corners of my heart for a time, in the faith that they will come again.

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Dedicated to my twins who were born 13 years ago today!

Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island.

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Tags: Autumn, corners, September
Posted in Autumn, Season | 10 comments »

Shifting rhythms

Saturday, August 27th, 2011

Shifting rhythms

It was a Friday evening in late summer, and a father led his young daughter to the edge of the water, where their wooden row boat waited. He had just returned from a harrowing week at work, yet when he slipped his life vest on, picked up the oars, and took his daughter’s soft hand into his own, he felt able to leave the cacophony of the week behind.

He perched her on the stern of the row boat and heaved the oars into the still swimmable water of late August. The little girl’s whispy blonde locks fluttered in the draught, created by the movement of the boat through the water. She chirped her thoughts to her father, explaining to him from her child’s perspective all that she beheld. Under his hat, her father smiled irrepressibly, occasionally acknowledging her magical description of the world around.

The boat glid into a wide bay, and suddenly one could hear an almost deafening noise from the skies. Despite the warmth still in the air and the water, the Canada geese knew that it was time to go. Late summer was deceptive - it could fool you into believing that this would last forever. Yet, the Canada geese were the wiser and had taken to the skies in droves.

The gigantic flock now landed all around the row boat. The young girl shrieked with delight as the geese blanketed the surface of the water with their presence. The father pulled in the oars to allow the birds to land all around them. As the geese clucked to one another things that no one could understand, father and daughter laughed, listened, and tried to imagine the mutterings of the migrating flock.

The dock was a slippery green under my feet, another indication of the coming autumn. I had slipped on my bathrobe and trudged through the path towards our local “beach” with Lucy the dog, who stopped to sniff at the first apples that had fallen to the ground. This was my shift from the onslaught of work I had left behind in the working week. It was still summer and so I didn’t bother about whether anyone thought that walking through the street in a bathrobe was appropriate. Most people in our neighborhood understood.

Now at the end of the dock, I beheld a father and his young daughter in a boat in a sea of geese. The evening sun shone a soft, even warmth upon them that seemed unreal with the thought of autumn just around the corner. Lucy and I did our lap, back and forth to the sail boat moored at a nearby shore. The troubles of the week were gone, washed away in the even cool of the lake.

As we approached home, I picked an apple from one of the neighbor’s trees and bit in. You had to offer assistance in consuming some of the apples in the neighborhood at this time of year: people couldn’t use them all up in cider and preserves. Down the road, I saw the father and the daughter walking home, hand in hand, with their lifejackets on, lively in conversation. It had been an evening of wonder, but mostly a needed shifting of rhythm and the chance to remember the dignity in living.

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Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island.

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Tags: Autumn, Boating, late summer, recreation, Swimming
Posted in Apples, Autumn, Balance, Boating, Food and Health, New Thinking, Outdoor Activity, Season, Summer, Swimming, children | 11 comments »

Keeping open windows

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

As most in the northern hemisphere don the sunhats and flip-flops, here in Sweden summer is just about over. As I look down the length of the dock, past the hanging birch to the cool water, my heart aches. Here there has been time for reflection, time to sort the important from the unimportant, space to breath. In town, the telephones ring and the car engines rumble as they wait at red lights. Here on this island, the brashness of man’s contraptions is far away, and the colors of summer slowly and gracefully give way to the yellows and browns of the autumn.

During the past days, I’ve been asking myself how to preserve this flow in life, away from my beloved island. How do I keep that feeling of joy at seeing a bird perched on the gate, or experiencing the power that comes from watching the waves as they wander in droves into other parts of this great lake? Since leaving full-time life here, it is a question I have asked myself each year in mid-August, as it becomes evident that this seamless mode of life is about to give way to the tight girdle of autumn schedules.

Yesterday, as a rebellion against all of the things that had to be done in order to begin closing down this place for the cold season ahead, I took a canoe tour with my husband and daughter on the glassy lake. The stillness was a salve on the open wound of having to leave. Sometimes my husband would urge me to row faster or harder, but I resisted, often lifting my oar just to glide and watch the hull peacefully breaking through the even surface.

The water reeds had built up a thick boundary between the water and the forest. One could see the yellowness creeping up their previously all-green stems. It was that golden time when beholding the water reeds, not as individuals but all together, left the impression of a golden ring surrounding each island.

The forest had already begun to smell musty. Raspberry time was over and now one could smell the mushrooms beginning to make their way up after cool evenings and morning dew. This smell disguised the fact that mushrooms actually cleaned the forest floor. It was one of those anomalies that I could never quite resolve. We pulled the canoe up at a dock where, unfortunately, a dead fish floated at the surface. It was a sad sight to see, but we left it there, knowing that some hungry creature in nature would soon take care of it.

Lucy the dog, who had been with us in the canoe, now charged through the trees with tail held high, as though on a great mission. The forest floor was still warm and dry from the summer. It didn’t yet have that feel of cold moisture as one’s shoe sunk into the moss. We picked whatever chantarelles we could find for dinner and climbed back into the canoe. The fish was gone – indeed there was a flow in life here.

Gliding

On the way back, I frequently lifted my oar out of the water and lifted my face to the sky. How beautiful it was to glide under the blue sky. Here there was no beginning and no end, and one lost track of boundaries.

We pulled the canoe up onto our beach and debated as to whether we should lift it to be stored on land. My instincts said, “No, I’ll be out here again before the weather turns.” Eventually, we left the canoe accessible to the beach so that I could retain a little open window for returning to the peace of the water when the autumn weather allowed. Retaining and sometimes climbing through those little open windows is my pledge this autumn, as the mushrooms fill the forest and the colors slowly but gradually turn to white.

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Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island.

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Tags: Autumn, Boating, Island
Posted in Autumn, Balance, Boating, Island, Landscape, New Thinking, Outdoor Activity, Season | 12 comments »

Island of love, hope and humanity

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

A place that everyone can believe in

They boarded the bus to visit the camp site on the idyllic island near their temporary quarters. Mother, father, and four children had fled from Iraq and were staying in the country-side. Here, they waited to learn whether they would be allowed to stay in this country, where they needn’t fear for their lives each day. In order to break the agony of waiting for that day of judgement, the parents had decided to take their children fishing at a nearby waterfront camp site, where one could stand on the long docks and cast a line out towards the horizon. It was a beautiful evening: one that offered the hope of forgetting, even if just for a few short hours, so that the young ones could catch a glimpse of how childhood could be. All of them longed for their homeland, but it was too dangerous a place to be in. They told themselves that there were beautiful experiences to be had in this new land, to which they had reluctantly fled.

As they boarded, the bus driver – a local woman with family roots in the area – greeted them. The youngsters responded in the local language and held out their tickets. The parents remained silent behind their children, embarrassed that they had not yet picked up this language that was in every way foreign to their own. The bus driver looked into each of the children’s faces and smiled at them. She had children of her own and knew that these young ones had been through experiences that she could not imagine. She acknowledged the parents, thinking how bizarre it was to believe that her country’s problems were created by them.

The family disembarked from the bus and walked down the long path that cut through the middle of the camp site. To their left and right, they saw people enjoying the still summer evening outside their trailers and tents. The mood was open and friendly. No one stared at the outsiders, or, for that matter, thought of them as outsiders. This was a place for anyone who loved nature and the sound of the crickets as night fell.

Children playing football near one of the trailers kicked their ball in the direction of the Iraqi children. At first, the newcomers were afraid to kick back, not because they couldn’t play football (a national sport in their country), but because they had been told by their parents to keep a low profile. Ignoring their advice, the most forward of the children took a gigantic kick and sent the ball flying back. The children at the camp site cheered.

There were many boats moored at the long docks. The family walked quietly past them to the end of one of the docks and cast their lines toward the horizon. This evening it was in various hues of fuschia, orange, and yellow, no different than the sunset in Iraq. The boaters, many of whom were drinking coffee after dinner or having a night cap, watched the night entertainment with interest. Would they or wouldn’t they catch a fish? After an hour or so, one of the boaters emerged from her boat and offered the parents some coffee and biscuits, which they gladly accepted. The children’s eyes were wide with delight, as the boater offered them some cordial, and, most importantly, biscuits.

A fish bit onto one of the hooks, and the boaters collectively held their breaths. After an extensive struggle, the fish got away. The silence was broken by the father of the children, who began to laugh. It was the kind of laughter loaded with the relief that there were good people here, and that life still had its beautiful moments. The boaters thought it infectious and began to laugh along. The parents looked back at the boats as their children continued to fish. For the first time, they felt a commonness with these people, who could laugh with them, sit in suspense with them, and share in the universal love of children.

I was one of the boaters this evening, and I know that this is how it can be on a Nordic island. Here, love, hope and humanity are so great, that there is no room for anything else.

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Written in memory of the victims of the Oslo and Utøya tragedies.

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Tags: hope, humanity, islands, love, Norway, Sweden
Posted in Boating, Camping, Inclusion, Integration, Island, Landscape, New Thinking, Nordic Countries other than Sweden, Norway, Openness, Outdoor Activity, Positive Thinking, Season, Summer, children | 1 comment »

Swedish Island Holiday: The art of being carefree

Sunday, July 17th, 2011

It ain't easy being carefree

It’s the sort of summer when you stop paying attention to the weather forecasts. They never seem to get it right. As I flung open the kitchen door this morning to push out Lucy the dog, who needs to be presented with a fait accompli in order to get up in the mornings, the sun shone brightly on the rainbow of roses that my husband and I had planted on the sandy hill. It’s interesting that when the sun shines despite the weather forecast, you don’t ask yourself where the clouds are. They’re just somewhere else, and here on my Swedish island during this short respite of light that we call summer, that is just fine.

There are always a hundred things to do here, but the wonderful thing about mornings in this place away from the gaze of schedules, is that you can ignore all of them and do something else. I started by counting the number of rose varieties that my husband and I had planted during all of the years that we had worked on this impossible project. By the time I counted thirty-five, Lucy the dog sat staring, drooling for breakfast amid the roses on the largest bed. She’d have to wait another minute, since my thoughts had wandered to the thistle, which too were flowering. I began to notice that there were hundreds of tiny flowers on each thistle head, something which had not gone amiss on the bumble bees, which rushed frenetically from one sweet flower to the next, like children in a candy store. The lavender were blooming too and I checked to see whether there were any in my pockets. Noticing that there were none, I picked a few and stuffed them down. No one’s pockets should be without lavender sprigs during the summer.

At the dock, I picked up the book I’d left there on the day before. There is something carefree about being able to leave your book on a chair at the dock and know you’ll find it there dry and untouched on the following day. I opened the book to where I had left off and read a couple of pages. I looked up across the water toward the horizon. Here there was time to think about what one had read, read it again, and see it from yet another perspective. If only there was a way to take this feeling of space and time with me into the working year. Life had meaning when we gave ourselves the time to discover it.

Lucy the dog refused to accept that her breakfast was one of those musts that could be ignored on this carefree morning. Her dark brown eyes with the sultry, blond lashes stared at me as I turned the pages in my bubble of liberation from duty. Then a fish stirred in the water and her attention was diverted. Lucy could never resist the fish that nipped at the surface. They seemed to her one of life’s great mysteries, which she was determined to unravel by watching them for hours on end during these lazy days.

With Lucy now occupied, I laid down on the dock, warmed by the morning sun, and stared at the sky. Lying there, staring at pure sky without limits, time or onlookers, was to me the greatest of life’s luxuries. The skies had no plans written in them, no matter how much the tabloids liked to insist that they did with their 14-day prognoses. There were endless possibilities there at all times. It was only we who chose to see sun or rain.

The strings of a guitar sounded out the open window. My son had awoken and was doing whatever struck him first. I was glad that he knew how to be carefree. It was one of those things that might protect him in life.

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Rose in the Sand available at major online bookstores now

Julie Lindahl’s new book, “Rose in the Sand,” is now available at major online bookstores in Sweden and elsewhere, including at www.amazon.com.

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Tags: carefree, Island, roses, sand, Summer, Sweden
Posted in Outdoor Activity, Season, Summer, gardening | 6 comments »

What are we thinking?

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

The delicate flowers of spring

Lucy the dog and I have gone off the beaten path. We tread through the soft green wisps that have cropped up everywhere on the forest floor like a silk carpet. The lilac, yellow and white flowers that flourish in the shade of the trees in May tickle my ankles to catch my attention. We can marvel at the big peonies and roses of the summer, but these delicate flowers of spring are more graceful and more moving because of their determination to rise up despite all of the odds: the iron nights of spring, the mud of April and May, and people with their dogs who long to trample upon the greenery as soon as it emerges.

Lucy digs furiously at the base of a tree where obviously some poor unsuspecting creature has made its home. While I fully expect that someday something angry is going to bite her nose off, on this occasion I let her take her fate into her own hands – or should I say paws? Amid the delicate flowers and the blades of young grass, my eye strikes a large-sized coffee cup from Pressbyrån (the local kiosk), which someone obviously decided they were done with. A little further on, an empty plastic water bottle lies forelorn on the ground with some used white tissues scattered here and there.

I try to reconstruct the story: A woman walking through the park on a sunny May day sipping a cappuccino receives a call from her fiancée who says he has decided to break off their engagement. She drops her cup on the ground in shock and begins to weep, unconsciously throwing her tissues onto the ground, one after the other. In order to calm herself down, she takes out the plastic water bottle from her hand bag, sits on the bench next to the statue and sips water, unable to organize her thoughts and emotions.

I like to construct these types of stories around garbage I see scattered on the ground in public areas, since I want to believe that my fellow person cares but has simply experienced a momentary lapse of responsibility. I want to believe that there are good reasons as to why people leave garbage scattered amid the delicate flowers. In my heart of hearts I am always hoping.

During the summers I sometimes walk around my island with a black garbage bag picking up the debris that visiting sailboats have left at our shores. I remember sitting on a rock with a black garbage bag that was somewhere between full to brimming, and thinking about what this says about developments in our society. Can people be blamed for feeling that the land isn’t theirs, and that the forests and wild shores aren’t really a part of their reality? People live mostly in big cities which create a considerable degree of separation from the earth and its cycles. We have divided the land between us so that we don’t feel a collective responsibility for it. Here in Scandinavia this attitude is somewhat mitigated by customary laws allowing common access to the land and the seas, but signs of lack of common responsibility are nevertheless everywhere to be seen.

I pick up the debris on the ground so that the forest floor is once again a place where people can dream. Our systems have no doubt helped more of us to survive, but they have also weakened our will to take own responsibility. How we encourage that attitude is probably the greatest challenge to cleaning up our planet.

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My new book, Rose in the Sand, a memoir of a decade lived in the Swedish wilderness, will be out shortly. Watch out for it at www.julielindahl.com and join me at Facebook and Twitter. Learn more about my non-profit, Stories for Society, which brings story-telling as a tool for learning and communication into schools. Enjoy my e-magazine at www.nordicwellbeing.com.

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Tags: clean planet, environment, garbage, spring
Posted in AllemannsrÃ¤tt, Conservation, New Thinking, Season, Self-reliance, Spring, nature, sustainability | 7 comments »

Clearing out

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

Time to get your hands dirty

Out on the streets people are cleaning. The last of the snow has melted and trickled down the gutters. All attention has turned to the debris which is the only remaining evidence of the gargantuan winter gone by. You’d imagine that with the sun shining warmth on this pre-Easter weekend, everyone would be in their sunchairs basking in the newspaper. But no, here in do-it-yourself Sweden there is no time for that sort of thing until your hands are sore and swollen, you’ve got a few scratches on your bare legs and you’ve put your back out from the first manual work of the season.

I stand on a ladder cutting down the hedges with an electric saw. “I’ll take care of that,” my husband says, somewhat embarassed that the passers by see him on the ground with a mere rake while his wife is up in the trees wielding a heavy machine. Yet I insist on sticking to my task because I enjoy the expanding view as the crowns of the hedges fall away.

Suddenly I can see the woman who usually passes laden with jewellry in the shiniest of black Jaguars. Usually I feel like a peasant when she passes. Today she is out with everyone else raking away the molten leaves on the flower beds that line the streets. Her appearance is still elegant, and so the rest of us are all still peasants, but the leaves in her rake and the black garbage bag in the corner are the same as everyone else’s. Nature in the spring unites us on the streets and feels like an experience of true socialism without the politics.

As I cut down the corner hedge, the tennis court comes into view. The community’s tennis players are out in full force preparing their red earth courts for the matches of the summer. Children chase one another around the perimeter of the courts while their parents clear the leaves and restore the lines of play. At such an illustrious location as the courts at the royal palace one might expect the King’s white-gloved tennis court maintenance crew to appear, but here in DIY Sweden there is always the possibility that the King and Queen might turn up in their shorts, t-shirts and visors to help clear out.

A glance beyond the courts reveals an enormous pyre that is building up so that it can be burnt on Walpurgis Night or Valborg. People from around the community make pilgrimages with their garden waste to this rapidly growing pile of garden twigs. Here in two weeks a leader of the community will make the customary protest speech before the first of May, International Worker’s Day (even if he isn’t on the left of the political spectrum). Everyone needs a good protest every once in a while. This will be smoothed over by the spring psalms of the local choir, which will give way to the flames that finally clear away the debris of the winter.

The hedge is even now and my husband is relieved that I haven’t lost a finger using the electric saw. I take one last look out onto the water that reaches out to the islands. The steam boat that transports eager visitors from the city hoots in advance of arriving to forewarn us that it is time to be done with our clearing out. In the gap between the distant islands there is a space beyond which I cannot see. It seems that there is nothing there except peace, silence and the promise of summer away from cars and the bustle of life. My spirit has already gone there as I suspect it has for everyone who has been clearing out with me on the streets today.

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Happy News! My new book, “Rose in the Sand,” which is a memoir of Swedish island life and the writing of which has generously been sponsored by a literary prize from www.gather.com will be out this April. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter for notification about the release date and more information about how to order it at my web site. Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. I a manage a non-profit for bringing story-telling to schools as a new tool for learning and communicating. If you are a principal, teacher or other person interested in knowing more about this, please visit www.storiesforsociety.com and get in touch!

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Tags: clean-up, clearing out, Easter, spring, Valborg
Posted in Season, Spring | 2 comments »

Spring rebellion

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

Little Rebel

A V-formation flew overhead. Lucy the dog and I watched it with necks craned back. The Canada geese had returned. My heart expanded with love of the season, wanting to break out and embrace every bud and creature that dared to speak despite the brisk temperatures. Each spring is like a rebellion in nature. That which lives will have its say, and like a ruthless dictator, the winter, which seemed impossible to depose just a few short weeks ago, begins to look increasingly toothless.

Over in the cropped linden trees the smaller birds are singing in an increasingly complex chorus. With each day that passes there are more voices. It’s beginning to sound like Mahler. Today a new diva in the branches catches Lucy’s attention. She sits with pricked ears and cocked head, and listens to this sound she has heard before but never tires of. Lucy is a retriever, in other words, a bird dog. Everything relating to birds fascinates her and now she has passed on her fascination to me. The thing about the birds in the trees is that it is often hard to spot where all of the sounds are coming from with the naked eye. I suspect that Lucy can smell the birds from her spot down on the ground. Without binoculars, I settle for the idea that trees sing. Not a bad thought.

Then down on the grass a crow caws condescendingly, provoking Lucy. There is something about crows that sends her blood pressure up. I hold her back and behold the raven creature. It looks at me with a regal air, as though I am nothing but a tiny spot. It is perhaps this attitude that gets Lucy all riled up. She’s a Swedish dog: she likes groups, lagom, consensus and togetherness; not a crow’s haughty tune.

We’ve gone to observe the small islands of tiny spring flowers breaking out on the sun-struck hills. Nature’s rebellion is dramatic. It has been going on under the snow for quite some time without anyone seeing it. Now as the snow retreats it is there for everyone to notice. There are purples, yellows, whites and all manner of shapes. The difference of form that life takes in this new free time is exciting and almost unbelievable after the montone rule of winter.

We’ve arrived back home and I urge Lucy to come in for breakfast. She cocks her head once again in such a way that says, “why?” Not even breakfast can tempt her out of the sun and the revolution of nature happening outside. She is a dog of the people and shuns creature comforts to be out there with them, witnessing the fall of winter.

Out the back window I can see that she has instead run to greet Mrs. Bengtsson, an avid gardener well into her eighties. We have opened up our two gardens so that all of us can enjoy a bigger garden. Mrs. Bengtsson is one of those diehard spring rebels and finds a great deal in common with Lucy the light lover. She has already cut back all of her bushes in readiness for the greenery. My heart is there with her but I am still here at my keyboard putting my faith in the written word to inspire you to become a rebel too (if you are not one already, that is).

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Tags: birds, dogs, rebellion, spring
Posted in Landscape, Outdoor Activity, Park, Season, Spring, Walking | 9 comments »