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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 »

Let men be men

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

Being a man

This was one of those Sunday mornings that defied all of the cliches about November mornings in Sweden. As I walked down the hill with Lucy the dog, the bright sun stroked my eyelids like a therapist massaging tired muscles. The last yellow leaves that still hung on the branches were like golden jewelry on a woman dressed in strict gray. As we passed one tree which still had relatively many leaves, they detatched and began to fall to the ground in great hoards. Lucy and I watched, mesmerized at the way that great robust trees undress rather than dress as winter approaches. The deer and moose had fled the farmland behind the palace grounds where they normally grazed during the warmer season. Now they were desperately hiding behind the conifers in the forest, away from the sights of men who are free to hunt them in the November sun.

The outdoors can be a harsh place to be during this season, but today sitting inside drying out next to a heater was simply all wrong. As I walked in the front door with Lucy I could already hear my son and his friend playing their latest TV game snuggled up in bed. I caught a glance at the two of them through the slit between the door and the doorway. The spoils of the night were many. There were sweet wrappers all over the floor. Somewhere in the corner the inner tinsel of an empty bag of chips reflected in the sunlight that struggled to enter the room from behind the closed curtains. Kids have to be allowed to be kids, I told myself, but how much do these guys really benefit from this sort of experience? From my previous blog entries you already know that I am one of those horrid mothers that never purchases sweets or chips – not even on a Friday. I also give my kids a lot of ’stick’ about sitting in front of screens for too long. Sometimes I wonder whether their friends think that I am from the Stone Age or another planet. They look at me like that occasionally.

Most of all, I wonder what all of the passive sitting and staring, and consumption of vast quantities of sugar and salt does to boys who are otherwise naturally exploding with energy. What do they do with their instinctive need to burn it off? Basically, I’ve been giving some thought to maleness. Being a woman I accept that I will never really have any first-hand insight into the matter. At the same time (and rather ironically) I find myself in the position of having to help the young males who ‘hang out’ in my home to get out and be males.

The subject has also been on my mind since last week I took my son to the Skateboard Park at Fryshuset, a head-turning place which is currently the largest youth center in the world. As we entered the first of two big halls filled with ramps for doing tricks that definitely should be reserved for young males, I plugged my ears. No one seemed to be bothered by the noise of at least fifty skateboards hitting up against ramps and walls. It struck me that in this culture which I wasn’t at all used to, a special social agreement governed. Everyone pursued their own energy and physical limits to the max but no one confronted anyone else with it. There was an own sense of peace and order which was nothing short of miraculous in a place where the energy level could have given rise to pure aggression at any moment.

The young men who ran the check-in counter treated the boys who paid their entry fees seriously. Accompanying mothers who attempted to speak on their sons’ behalf were respectfully ignored. Passing that check-in counter was a ritual in responsibility for any boy. They could just as well have put up a sign saying, “here we are males who agree to exercise our full energies AND be good to one another.” There were a few girls here and there, but not many. Essentially, this was a male place.

On my night desk I have a book written by the founder of Fryshuset, a man called Anders Carlberg. After the day at the Skateboard Park, it didn’t surprise me that in this book (“Generationsklyftan hotar demokratin”, Hjalmarson & Högberg, 2002) he wrote, among other things, about maleness and the need to create opportunities for channeling this energy in our society. I take the liberty of translating a line that is beginning to make increasing sense to me: “So that boys can develop to become responsible, grown men they need to be allowed to develop positive male traits.” I thought of the boys at the schools I’d been working in. Yes, we would solve a lot of problems by giving this subject a bit more thought.

This Sunday ended as gracefully as it began. As the afternoon sun began to move towards the horizon I set out for a run. The grumpy elderly man who barely ever talks to anyone on his daily walk through the park shouted out as I ran past him: “Faster, faster, I say!” I grinned and waved. Even old men have a strong and entirely healthy need to be male.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Tags: boys, Fryshuset, men, skateboarding
Posted in Autumn, Culture and Health, Season, children | 8 comments »

Taking a breather for the planet

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Stockholm in November?

Sunday came and went and you, my beloved readers, probably noticed that Höstlov (autumn break for schools) had sabotaged my usual Sunday blog entry. The truth is that by the time Höstlov comes along, we’ve all been waiting for it for some weeks. As Wonderful November approaches in Sweden one feels like a person holding his/her breath underwater. When will that respite come? When will we have the time to light our candles and huddle under the soft fleece in an easy chair with a favorite book and Mahler awakening our senses from the stereo? On Sunday morning that moment had come. My husband and the children were wrapped under their warm covers still fast asleep – even Lucy the dog needed some extra shut-eye, and my moment in the arm chair arrived. Do forgive me for this little blip. Here I am: better late than never!

“Aren’t we going to Thailand or London?” the children asked. “All of our friends are taking an extra week off and going for holidays SOMEWHERE!” Just as I learned that Stockholm was not somewhere, I was carefully calculating what we would be doing on each day in this beautiful city that the working year leaves us so little time to enjoy. In particular, I had been watching the sun symbol in the weather section of the newspaper moving from Tuesday to Wednesday to Thursday…Is there is a conspiracy going on between the government and the weather service to keep our spirits up? The sun will come, just not today.

When it rains there is always the cinema. We navigated the traffic – a relatively new phenomenon in Sweden – to see the film “Oceans“. It is a documentary sponsored by the wealthy of the world (and Disney) about the high seas and what goes on deep under the surface. I have done some scuba diving in my time and mostly when I watch such underwater documentaries, I can imagine how the film might have been shot. In this case, I just could not imagine how the filmmakers managed. There were images of the sea at its most violent and frightening, with building-high waves crashing up against one another like titans. There was an image of a diver filming a sperm whale as it ‘played’. An inadvertant whip of any of its fins could easily have sent the diver to Valhalla. There were the strange creatures that stay clear away from human life at the very bottom of the sea; creatures that look more like they come from Star Wars than from our planet.

For a little over an hour we dwelt in a world that was not ours but at the same time very much ours. In the film a whaling boat hauls a shark out of the water, mercilessly cuts off its fins for making that terrible luxury - shark fin soup – and throws the live shark which no longer has any possibility to move itself through the water into the depths. I never thought I would feel sorry for a shark but for the first time I realized how helpless these creatures can be when man is heartless. The garbage flowed freely around the seals who could barely see through coastal water filled with gritty garbage. The contrast to the happy creatures that can live in the pristine waters on either pole of the earth was palpable.

We need films like this to remember. Just a couple of days before I had been in the supermarket in a rush to get home and put something quick yet special on the table for Friday’s dinner. As the editor of The Nordic Wellbeing Cookbook, I know that I should skip those big, juicy shrimps that come from farms which destroy entire coastal ecosystems. Yet there were crowds, I was tired and I could not find the sustainable Atlantic shrimp or think of anything else in my exhaustion after the long week. I was glad to meet a friend at the cash register to remind me that even if those shrimps were big and juicy, we should skip them for the sake of all of the beauty on land and in the sea. Sounds simple and it is simple. Yet, it is so easy to give in to the complexity of exhaustion, crowds, lack of time and waning creativity which follows.

Thank goodness for Höstlov. It’s time to take stock and remind onesself that with just a little extra breath and a moment’s reflection those majestic creatures in the sea can continue to make this planet the universal miracle that it is.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Tags: earth, environment, Oceans, Stockholm, sustainability
Posted in Autumn, Conservation, Food and Health, Season, nature, sustainability | 1 comment »

Roses bloom in October too

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

Little rebel

The rain hit the lawns and turned the first snow into tiny islands of white. It has been a week when the usual chaos of the first snow ensues. We know that it will come each year, but each time is as shocking as the last. The radio blurts out interviews with people relieving themselves of the shock by blaming the chaos of the weather on somebody else: “they should have done this,” “they should have done that,” they say. Yes, but weather is weather and each of us bears some responsibility when it comes.

This Sunday morning the rain is restoring some of the autumn. The fallen leaves have become visible again from under a thin cover of snow and provide a small respite before the inevitable happens and we head full throttle for Christmas. In my garden the roses refuse to give up. I love them for this. There is something extremely freeing about watching a rose bloom in the cold north in late October. As Lucy the dog and I head out for our morning stroll in the rain, the petals grin with the resilience of rebels. Out on the paths a group of Sunday morning backpackers unbelievably sets off for a hike in the forest behind the palace just as the rain intensifies. I catch a glimpse of their faces as I walk past them. They remind me of my roses.

This week our home seems constantly full of other rebels after school hours. Our children are in that twilight zone between childhood and teenager-ness (they are 12), and so are their friends. We’re never quite sure exactly what they are going to get up to next but at least they are doing it at home. It goes without saying that my favorite yogurt and juice is always gone before I can so much as catch a glimpse of it. The laundry baskets are overflowing with bed sheets used by kids staying over. No one thinks to use them twice. The furniture is rearranged in a way that I don’t recall placing it. Yet whenever I hear the peal of children’s laughter and the scrambling of intense play (all of the time), I can live with all of the symptoms of a household overflowing with young rebels.

As a parent one watches this age with a lump in one’s throat. The child for whom you were once the center of attention is suddenly looking out into the world and seeking new forms of belonging. Belonging is one of those primal instincts that drives our behavior. It is like food or the instinct to reproduce ourselves; we seek it irrespective of logic, and sometimes to our detriment. Yesterday’s radio program about a man who as a child was drawn into a criminal gang because the other options for belonging (family, school) were so weak that they didn’t offer an appealing option, struck me hard in this respect. The thing that eventually saved this young rebel, who landed himself in juvenile care on several occasions, was a coach in a football team who was not afraid of putting his arms around this young man and making him feel a part of something more appealing than a criminal gang.

Perhaps I am not thinking so much of my own children when I hear this story, as of some of the children I have met through my various children’s projects over the years. In every group are at least two children out of ten who are viewed as having special challenges. These can range from learning disabilities to aggression. Many of these kids feel that they are not a part of the group and will never be (therefore they must seek other groups outside of school). I’ve noticed that when these children are given the opportunity to learn in a way that allows them to express themselves and feel that they are heard by others, they tend not only to participate but also to shine with the consequence that the whole group is lifted. This is not the way that learning generally happens in our schools which are still primarily governed by the idea that children should learn quietly at their desks by having information passed down to them.

One of the greatest challenges that our modern societies face is how to include these children who otherwise may go on to pursue their need for belonging in ways that become problematic for them and for the whole society. My own feeling is that opening up as many opportunities as we can to include them at schools – not as special needs but as a part of the group – will take us a long way. Perhaps the reason that my roses are blooming despite all at the end of October is because I actually see them.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Tags: Autumn, Belonging, children, Inclusion, rain, schools, snow, Winter
Posted in Autumn, Belonging, Inclusion, New Thinking, Season, children | 5 comments »

The forgotten island of the individual

Sunday, October 17th, 2010

Submitting to winter

The leaves have turned to crystal wafers. The winter has caught them just as they were rolling up to dry. When the October midday sun comes they’ll dampen down in the melted crystal and start their long process of becoming a part of the muddy ground. A thin crust of ice covers the ponds in the park. The birds that haven’t migrated swoop down to drink but cannot find a way in. They’ll have to settle for the lake outside of the royal palace which is still open, though covered in the morning mist that plays games with their vision.

As winter approaches in Sweden there is very little to do but to submit. Under the guise of mastering the season with our simmering stews, lit fires and thick-soled boots we play along and deep down know that we will always be the pipers playing to King Winter as the darkness and cold descend. There is nothing wrong with being submissive to nature during this season. In fact, it can be quite cozy and it is probably healthy for us to get away from our hubris – the notion that man has or will somehow become the master of nature.

However, out and about among the young of Swedish society this week, I’ve noticed a kind of submission that disturbs me. As I continue to help children to create stories at school, it strikes me that so many feel pressed to fit into a world that really isn’t their own from a very young age. The child that wants to draw angels feels pressed to draw beer bottles because that is the world that it lives in. The child that is curious about other places in the world feels pressed to make racist comments because that is what it takes to be cool at the moment. The child that revels in the fresh, clear autumn air feels pressed to take a puff.

Apparently we are living in the age of the individual, but in the shards of the collective that children sometimes reproduce as they tell their stories it seems that the reverse is in danger of happening. Children are in many ways a mirror upon our society: they tell us where we are at. This tells me that we are deluding ourselves if we think that we live in the age of the individual. We have a great deal of work to do to give children the wherewithal to reveal who they really are and to stand up to forces that bear no relation to the world that our children would like to live in.

With this challenge in mind, it is perhaps no coincidence that there has been a sudden swell of interest in story-telling; our own stories, not those of others, that is. Just this past weekend The Fabula Festival in Stockholm highlighted the value of this ancient art to our society. Most of all, it is a way for us to express our own worlds – those forgotten islands of our own hidden longings where the spectrum of colors is rich and diverse.

Lucy the dog rushes to greet yet another visitor to the park. She must be the only dog in this park that everyone – even those afraid of dogs – seems to be pleased to meet. “Isn’t it amazing how similar people are to their dogs,” my husband comments, looking at a woman with frizzy tufts of big hair walking her poodle. My thought is that it would be an honor to be like Lucy. This wonderful creature seems hell-bent on expressing her joy, which pours in generous floods from her very heart, and never submitting to any prevailing glumness or indifference.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter.

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Posted in Autumn, Landscape, Park, Season, Story-telling, children | 15 comments »

Fighting an instant autumn

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

What does listening to this do to you?

We’re past the autumn equinox and things are actually still OK. It’s like getting to what you fear will be your worst moment and then realizing afterwards that it wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, this Sunday morning’s thoughts about the week gone by are colored by the breathtaking palette of yellows, auburns and deep greens in which I find myself. We’ve come back to our island in the wilderness for the weekend to prepare the garden for the spring. The air is cool but there is no bite in it and the roses are lovelier now than they have been throughout the entire warm season. Like tragic heroes, they continue to yield new buds against the rising tide of their winter fate.

This morning when I swung open the laundry room door (the back door to the house that faces east to the rising sun) the first thing that I heard was the rustling of leaves in the birch forest behind the house. They sounded like a woman’s ball gown swirling on the dance floor. I had almost forgotten this sound of the rustling leaves and stood there for a few minutes in the morning sunlight filling my senses with it. My generation had not understood the importance of hearing that sound. We had been obsessed by Wall Street and the revving engine of a flashy new sports car.

I thought of the children I met in the school yards where I worked this week. I wondered whether they were further or closer than my generation to being able to hear the sound of the rustling birch. I dislike being a pessimist but based on what I have seen and heard, further away is my guess. These children are growing up in a world where the idea of “instant” governs. Food, friends and gratification should be instant otherwise there is stress, frustration, irritation and, even worse, aggression. I have to admit that I like instant when it comes to health care but in many facets of life it is an obstacle to happiness. To be able to listen to the sound of the wind in the leaves you have to be able to let go of “instant” and value a tree that has taken a long time to develop its rich foliage. There is a tremendous satisfaction in that. You have to appreciate the ideas of ‘gradual’ and ‘cyclical’ so that when the sound of the leaves is gone for a while in the winter you have the confidence that it will come again.

“What type of society are we living in when people cannot read past the first line because one complete sentence is too many?” asked a teacher at a school I am working at in frustration at the difficulty of getting a response from today’s parents. Perhaps we have too many incomplete sentences without substance, I thought, reflecting on the rash of meaningless words out there on Facebook and Twitter. What happens when we are forced to be so instant that we are barely communicating? My sense is that we can see some of the answers playing themselves out in our school yards.

Last week I finally managed to complete the annual migration of the winter jackets and boots from the basement back into the storage space near our front door. Each year as the temperatures sink and our toes begin to freeze I realize that I am once again overdue with this little chore which wouldn’t be a problem if only my desk wasn’t piled so high with work. Next week we don’t have to flee indoors any more. I can stand in the park with Lucy the dog in my sturdy, warm boots and duffle coat and try, amid the morning traffic, to tune into the sound of the last rustling leaves of the season.

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Learn more about my writing and other projects at www.julielindahl.com. Join me at Facebook and/or Twitter where I too communicate in incomplete sentences!

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Tags: Autumn, birch, children, gradual, instant, schools
Posted in Autumn, New Thinking, Openness, Season, Slow, children | 1 comment »

Sweden’s Smallest Factory

Friday, October 16th, 2009

pomological heaven

Of all of the superlatives about Sweden, one of the least known is that it is home to the largest number of apple varieties in the world. As I drive out of Drottningholm towards Ekerö, I notice innumerable home-made roadside signs inviting me to visit Äppelfabriken on Färingso. I do love “mysig” (cozy in Swedish) little eco-cafes but they seem to be popping up everywhere with the same quinoa and sprouts on whole wheat.

Äppelfabriken is original. It is surrounded in pomological history, as, according to a map dating back to the early 17th century, Sweden’s first extensive apple orchards were located on Färingsö. Now there are so many apple trees on this island and Mälaren as a whole, you’d imagine the entire place is an apple orchard. However, Äppelfabriken has been clever in choosing a location steeped in the history of its star ingredient.

Most eco-cafe owners are passionate about sustainability issues. The owners of Äppelfabriken are too although their delivery is less emotional and more to the point. On the wall in the barn to the right of the boutique, where one can sit in front of an open fire and try many different kinds of apples, there is a sign with the following striking text (in translation):

“At the dawn of the 20th century juices and ciders were made by Stockmos of Färingsö and apple pop by Pommac with real juice from Swedish apples as their base. Today there we have an industrial production which excludes Swedish apples. Apple cider is commonly made from imported juice that has been transported all the way from China. Apple sauce is now usually made with imported dried apple flakes. Each year thousands of tons of apples fall to the ground in Sweden and rot. Old recipes and means of fermenting apples without chemical additives are forgotten. In the shops there are “Red”, “Green” and sometimes “Yellow apples. These have usually been sprayed and harvested before they are fully ripe so that they can be transported halfway around the earth. That is the reason that they have a lesser taste, a thicker skin and less nutrition.”

Once you have read this, you are high-tailing it into the small boutique to view the many rows of jars and other apple products produced in Sweden’s smallest factory. A freshly baked apple pie has just been run over from the house next door and I purchase a piece to enjoy in the nearby heated greenhouse. I brew my own coffee and feel at home eating off real porcelain and ceramic that doesn’t match, rather than the usual designer white. The cement mouse under the table with the red eyes stares at me. This is one of many under the tables and in the corner around the place. The cats feel right at home too.

Sweden's smallest factory

My suggestion is to give Äppelfabriken a whirl on one of these frosty October weekends (open Fridays-Sundays 12-16 until 20 December) when you’ve got cabin fever but don’t feel like blending with the crowds. Sweden’s best little apple factory is certainly worth a visit. Visit their web site and you’ll notice that they’ve won an award or two.
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Looking for apple recipes? Visit The Nordic Wellbeing Cookbook and Julie’s Kitchen at www.nordicwellbeing.com.

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Tags: Apples, ecology, Färingsö, Mälaren, sustainability, Äppelfabriken
Posted in Autumn | 2 comments »