Julie\'s Nordic Island

Ice drips in the winter sun

The ice dripped in the winter sun. It was the first day when the light had been intense enough to cause dripping in the sunlight. To hear it was an extraordinary wakeup call. The cycle was happening again as it always does, always will (or so we think).

I imagined that on my summer island, the bees were waking up to cleaning time. Few know that they start in February in the winter sun, long before any of us become aware of buzzing, pollen or flowers. They remove the bodies of their colleagues, who have not managed the coldest days, and the debris that does not belong in the pristine environment of the hive. The jars from last year’s harvest are lined up on my counter – so many of them – and I wonder whether this is fair. Did I really need it all? It is a question we small-time beekeepers rarely ask ourselves. The objective, as for all producers, is to get as much as possible. Yet, in these times of meager resources on earth, we should think again. What did it take for industry to produce the sugary fluid I gave to the bees before the winter after I took most of their honey? What would it have taken to leave them enough of their own to manage the season?

Away from the microcosm of my island, out in the big world, we humans are causing change to happen at breakneck speed. The number of humans on earth, the resources we crave to sustain ourselves and our collective ambition for an existence that cannot hold us all are unprecedented. We know it, since we hear it every day in the daily onslaught of bytes that are so many we are beginning to become immune to them. We hope that technology will help us knit it all together, somehow make it work, yet that alone will never be enough.

A friend of mine writes to me from India, a place where poverty and explosive growth exist uneasily, side by side. How can what I do on my serene islands in Sweden be of any consequence to the enormity of what is happening in his world? He speaks of a new consciousness rising sporadically in the part of the world I live in, and I find my answer there. Yes, of course, we should eat less meat, recycle our plastic and use public transport more. Yet, each of these small initiatives is only sporadic if it isn’t tied to something greater: that is a common consciousness about the way that all life is similar, relies on the same principles of birth, death, renewal and the most delicate of balances.

For many years, I watched and wrote about the smallest things I saw happening on a small Nordic island in the wilderness. Some thought I had become a hermit. In fact, there was no moment in life in which I had reached out to the world more directly than during these years. In the prism of the bees cleaning for the spring and the ice dripping in the winter sun, I saw the world for the very first time as it really was:  something I was a part of but didn’t govern; something that was mine but not mine; a place where I had the responsibility to make the consciousness of one grow.

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For any of you interested in the above, I cannot recommend more watching the filming and photography of  Yann Arthus-Bertrand (http://www.yannarthusbertrand.org/). These have just been shown on Kunskapskanalen in Sweden and you can enjoy his heart-rending images of the world from a helicopter online.

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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. Order it now from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk , Author House, authorhouse.co.uk and many other online bookstores. Learn more about Julie’s other books and activities at www.julielindahl.com.

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The light gleamed golden on the windows of the palace. It was one of those magical sunny days in late January in Drottningholm Park when even those who disliked the cold felt compelled to come out, walk and observe nature’s graceful transition into the spring winter. Anyone who has lived close to nature in the North knows that four seasons are just a commercial imposition. The Sami eight seem more accurate in this part of the world, particularly where the phases within each season are distinct and worthy of their own seasonal names. Thus, the spring winter.

Everywhere in the snow there were signs of people taking  advantage of the opportunities. The hills were engraved with the grooves from children’s sleds, and the flat farmlands behind were criss-crossed by ski tracks and horses’ hooves. An Iceland horse bearing a rider tölted past us, and we wondered what physiological dynamic allows for these horses to move in this mechanical manner. The pools in the lake near the shore indicated where the ice had been tested for the skating weeks ahead. It still wasn’t ready, but soon the ice too would be grooved with the markings of human recreation.

The temptation to make use of this time of walking to think ahead or about the past is very great. The human mind is extremely talented at living in every other moment than in the present (oh, how I miss Lucy the dog who was an expert at this!). My husband and I have been training and, interestingly, we find that very often this way of being results in silence. Since we have been together (happily) for fifteen years, silence doesn’t scare us much. It isn’t a sign of anything except silence. Both of us have made it a resolution to appreciate life more this year, and we concluded that achieving this means living more in the present, and therefore probably more silence.

We took a break from our walking and observation of tracks to sit in the very same place that the renowned architect Ralph Erskine sat, apparently every day, overlooking extensive fields of grazing horses. Today they were out, strapped into horse blankets getting their vitamin D and cursing the thick layer of snow that had developed over the albeit dry grass. I could easily understand why Erskine came to sit here everyday. Of course it was a good place to reflect and plan, but the greatest insight lay in discovering its value as a place for silence and stillness. We smiled in the sunlight and that in itself was wonderful.

As someone who is embroiled in a book project which involves extensive research and writing about the past, I sometimes wonder whether I am being a hypocrite. Am I like everyone else who preaches mindfulness while twiddling their thumbs about things that are not happening right now? Or perhaps the question is: Does striving to be satisfied in the present mean giving up thoughts about past and future (similar to giving up anything that might be addictive)?

Just as these thoughts were becoming all too tangled to pursue, it struck me that the most important thing about experiencing the present is the experience of the undeniable truth. Yes, the horses looked beautiful in the fields in the sunshine, but careful observation suggested that they were a little frustrated with standing in the cold. The truth is a complex picture, never just one way or the other. This lesson is a very important one to take with us whenever we look backwards or forwards.

As we walked back towards the palace, it struck me that the debate about Queen Silvia’s father had been infected by people who wanted to see things one way or the other. The picture is far more complex than that. Perhaps both the media and the court would be helped by a little meditation on the nature of the present.

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Wondering what to give a friend or loved one this New Year? 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 the founder of Stories for Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to learning and communication through storytelling.

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A Winter Fugue

The snow flakes fell ever so softly in the last light of a Sunday afternoon as a Bach fugue played. The smell of hot coffee and the slow falling of the light flakes through the cold winter air played into one another so perfectly that it hurt.

Our boots were at the door with the snow melting onto the floor in dirty puddles. The front doors of Swedish homes at this time of year are always spotted with tiny pools of melted snow and the chaos of slightly damp gloves and hats. Although I’d tried to remove it days ago, still mixed into the winter disorder of our front hallway was the soft, white fur of Lucy the dog. I suspected that the fine wisps would be with us forever in the crevices and rugs of this house, even though she’d left us for The Rainbow Bridge some days ago (see my last blog entry and the lovely poem someone  posted in response to it).

Out on this wintry afternoon, my husband and I had watched the dogs eagerly chasing and retrieving sticks that their masters had thrown for them to retrieve up on the hill. An eager, young flat coat ran straight towards me, jumped up with its tail whipping back and forth at a frenetic pace as though to say “cheer up,” and licked my hands. The reprimand from its master was quick to follow, but I shook my head to indicate it was alright, her dog had made the right instinctive judgment. I was a former master in need of canine attention.

As I walk around the neighborhood these days feeling as though I am lacking an arm or a leg, the canines that spot me realize they have a job to do. There is no end to their affection when they greet me, and their masters are often embarassed. Just as I am on my way to explain that they do this because they can see the gaping wound of loss which I bear after the passing of Lucy the dog, their masters pull them back. If only we could fully appreciate the undisguised empathy of these creatures, which wear their hearts on their sleeves.

Out in the garage the Christmas tree lies on its side, ready to be transported away to the dump. It is nearly bare, some of the remaining needles blended with Lucy’s fur in the crevices of the house. Even the removal of the Christmas tree was hard this year. When I decorated it, I did so with Lucy curled up on her bed next to me in the candlelight. Now in the cold, unrelenting light of the new year they were both gone.

As I sip my coffee, I notice a curious thing happening in the garden. Two small birds have found an opening in the pond and are cleaning their wings in the water. As they shake out the water and the dirt, and chirp at one another, I can hear that something new is on its way. The loss of winter will soon be taken over by growth and abundance. Empty spaces and branches will be filled. At my window sill, the fuschia that dislikes the winter has begun to sprout light green leaves. It knows that the light has turned.

The snow falls in flakes, it is cold outside and Lucy the dog is gone. With a heavy heart, I place my faith in the twittering birds at the pond and in the fuschia with the new sprouts. One wishes to dwell in the past when loss occurs, but nature will not allow it and there are good reasons for this.  Today there is undoubtedly more light than there was yesterday, because this is simply the way of all things.

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Wondering what to give a friend or loved one this New Year? 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 the founder of Stories for Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to learning and communication through storytelling.

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Calling my attention to the important things I would otherwise miss.

2012 kicked off with a stark little lesson of life: all things will pass. Driving up to the mountains near the Norwegian border before New Year’s Eve, I learned from the kind veterinarian that Lucy the dog would not make it through 2012 with me. In fact, we have a few more precious days left. For those of you who have been following this blog and/or my other writings, you are aware that this beautiful creature that looks more like an advertisement for Save the Seals than a dog, has been a constant companion in walking and writing. Lucy has called my attention to things that otherwise would pass me by: a squirrel that has just clambered up a tree; a cat that has run across the street; the great mysteries that lie hidden under piles of fallen leaves.

Up here at my mountain hut this New Year, Lucy and I are taking the last of our walks in the snow together. She looks like a chequerboard, with great patches of fur shaved off here and there, after an operation that could not save her.  It would seem responsible to keep her covered with so much bare skin exposed, but what is life worth if you cannot even have a refreshing morning roll in the snow? She takes each step more slowly than she used to, and I am always ahead of her these days. Still, at times she smells the exhilaration of the mountains in the air and charges into the great piles of snow on the sides of the cross-country tracks. Life and walking with Lucy in the snow this early 2012 seems like the most precious of elixirs: each small drop to be relished in moments one strives, against reality, to expand into an eternity.

Dogs have very deep souls, says my 100-year-old grandmother. “Looking into their eyes is like looking into a deep sea of feeling and intensity.” Of late, Lucy has made increasing efforts to meet my gaze. When she was younger, there was so much else for her to be interested in, and then there was the submission factor. To stare straight into your master’s eyes is an act of defiance for a dog. Lucy was rarely defiant. Up here at our mountain house, as she senses that her life is coming to a close, she seeks out my eyes. In the finality of life we are all equals. I put down my tiresome books and newspapers, and meet her gaze. Her eyes are two black spots in a white face, and now they fasten onto me like magnets. Her head cocks as she reads my thoughts. I hope that she can feel their caress upon her heart.

In sympathy with Lucy, I have contracted some sort of curable disease which a simple packet of pills will cure. Lucy’s ears are pricked up as I head off to the doctor’s office in the neighboring town. She wants to follow me – knows that I am not well. Once the car has pulled out, she sits waiting in the patch of thin snow (as opposed to the thick and unruly snow everywhere else) that the cover of the car has left in our driveway. Despite the discomfort, she waits there for two hours until I return with my tablets. She is overjoyed to see me. I would share my tablets with her, if I thought they might help.

I’ve already asked Lucy to meet me once I catch up with her at the Pearly Gates. I can see her jumping up at them, barking at St. Peter, or whoever it is that guards that gate, to let me through. My husband thinks that I am insane when I talk in this way, but that is alright. Thinking of Lucy as an angel in heaven, with fluffy white wings that match the color of her fur, isn’t something I am ashamed of. Each of us has to find ways of coping with the finality of life, and thinking of walking with my faithful hound in the clouds, both of us winged and this time looking down upon the squirrels in the trees, seems a pleasant way to do so. Beyond that, I have made a pledge to Lucy that in 2012 I will do whatever I can to enjoy this short and precious thing we call life. I hope you’ll join me in this important mission.

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Wondering what to give a friend or loved one this New Year? 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 the founder of Stories for Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to learning and communication through storytelling.

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Merry Christmas

As Lucy the dog and I hit the beaten path today the air smelled a damp December morning. The snow that had lured us into thinking that we would be having a white Christmas was now in small ice clumps in patches on the road. It could have been any regular day in December, except for the fact that I knew it was Christmas Eve, and there is no getting away from the morning feeling special on this day.

Lucy sniffed in the air as we passed under the apple trees. She sensed some of the unpicked fruit of autumn, festive and red, up in the highest branches. It was as though nature herself had decorated the trees for Christmas. In a delicate pot at the entrance to one of the homes, ivy intertwined with tiny Christmas lights caught my attention. It seemed to me the most beautiful of man-made decorations in the neighborhood. Someone had obviously seen the beauty in a tiny object that most overlooked, with all of the more grandiose decorations around. It seemed so unpretentious and meek, yet was that fine seed grain amid all of the chaff that lifted the dignity of the neighborhood.

The absence of people on the streets gave room for reflection upon the meetings of the previous day. People I hadn’t seen in ages, although we all lived in the same area, seemed to be around every corner at the supermarket. One particular friend of mine stood facing the Christmas hams in puzzlement. Which one to choose? Everything seemed to be piled onto the shelves in such overabundance, that the mind had to work very hard to sort. Perhaps that is why people seemed to feel they had less time each year at Christmas. Commercial choices, while temporarily exhilarating, depleted time.

I tapped my old friend on the shoulder, at which she turned, and gave me the most unexpected long and heartfelt hug. It seemed at that moment that we had decided to push away all of the rest – the chaos and excess of the season – and to draw into a concentrated moment what Christmas meant between people. We remembered the elves’ workshop she had run for the children in our community when our children were small. There were no limits to what could be created there. We also remembered the summers out in our canoes and promised to find time to spend in them together with our families when the ice lifted and the islands once again became accessible by boat.

As the clocks tick on (yes, I still have clocks that tick in my house),  it is time to turn my attention to a mother’s duty to create the soul of the family festivities at Christmas. In our liberated times, I am sure many would argue this should no longer be a woman’s duty. However, the truth is that more often than not it is and, I would argue, we should see it as part of our power. If there is something that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee reminded women of this year, it is to believe in the value of our capacity to open our arms and cradle society, however we do that.

Dear friends and faithful readers, this is wishing you and yours peace and joy.

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Wondering what to give a friend or loved one this holiday season? 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 the founder of Stories for Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to learning and communication through storytelling.

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Waiting and longing...

This morning it rained on the boxes of Christmas decorations waiting to be unpacked outside the front door. The newspaper ran a headline about the dangers that global changes in weather pose to our health. What about the dangers they pose to Christmas? I need snow to make sense of Santa Claus, reindeer, and wool mittens and socks hanging from the mantlepiece.

Yet, we’ve had these years before. The greyness of November just seems to get even more grey and muddy, until your eyes begin to wonder whether there are in fact any other shades in the color spectrum. The rain and the puddles soak us in annual greyness up to that point when the snow provides a release and brings in a new time. We are still in waiting, but, despite the headlines, there is the faith it will come.

Today is the first of Advent and already in every dutiful Swedish window a candelabra shines those small, magical spots of light behind the curtains. The wreaths that the school children sell door-to-door in order to raise money for their school trips are hung at almost every entrance, including ours.

Inside, saffron cakes, ginger bread cookies and spiced red wine shift the aroma of our interiors. Just to make sure that no one forgets, the cashier at the supermarket checkout always asks whether you have remembered to purchase your saffron. Why saffron in Sweden at Christmas? It certainly isn’t a local product. The answer is that we need saffron from Persia to make our food bright.

Outside the palace, a giant tree illuminates the grey traffic congestion with hope. In those lights there is the promise of space and, above all, time, that comes with the break at Christmas. Just now it seems that there is more to do than ever. The demands of the holiday season place a heavy extra layer on top of already heavy schedules. Yet, in the light there is the promise of doing nothing but watching the snow fall peacefully from the window sill on Christmas morning.

As we move towards the darkest day, our eyes open later, shut earlier and our working days are cut short by the sounds and entertainments of Christmas. We resist hibernating with the bears, but, to some extent, nature forces us into a semi-hibernation whatever we do. I look through the candelabra out the window and long for the snow to cover the wilted plants. I know that it is in the longing of November that this time of year has its greatest value. Longing is hope, and hope is light.

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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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Indian summer?

They said it was an Indian summer. The tabloids shouted with glory that we would be wearing shorts on 1 October. “The summer returns,” they proclaimed, like authorities who knew something that we did not. The thing about the tabloids is that if you ask your heart what the truth is about any given subject they report on, you will probably land at something closer to reality than anything you read.

Yet, Lucy the dog and I fell into the same trap as everyone else on 1 October when we marched into the park early in the morning, expecting to find a summer’s scene. In the long linden alley stretching from the palace to the fields behind, the path was golden. It was as though the King himself had ordered it as a sort of rebuke at the tabloids, who are like mice constantly making holes in his cheese.

The young linden trees, planted like new princes in this alley this spring, had already succumbed to the autumn and were nearly bare. Their golden insignia lay on the ground below, and Lucy charged into them to make them fly. The leaf blowers hadn’t turned up yet to disguise the autumn, and so Lucy took this liberty, which I am drawn to take myself,  in the autumn leaves in the pathways.

Of the paths the oaks and other great trees looked as though red and yellow paint had been splattered upon them from the skies. They appeared like women (or men) who had streaked their hair in the brightest of colors. These trees reminded me of my sister, Evelyn, who once turned up to visit me from the United States after a stopover with the hairdresser in Iceland with four different colors in her hair.

Up on the hill where Lucy and I defy the law and dispense with the leash, the grass was wet underfoot. It hadn’t rained the night before, so we knew that this was October’s morning dew returned to soak our feet. It was clearly time for the rubber boots I had foolishly left standing idle at the front door. The white statues in the park glistened with dew that looked like sweat from struggle. All of the statues in the park had that look of having just survived a gargantuan battle, perhaps a sign of the hard times in which they were created.

Out in the fields behind the park, the morning mist lifted to reveal the deer looking frightened at the lifting of their cover. The falling away of nature’s camouflage and the gradual withdrawal of all to white and bareness was an annual trauma for these creatures. If only they could read the tabloids, things wouldn’t feel so bad.

There was no questioning that the time of respite was over. We would begin to walk more briskly, wear heavier clothes and stop our dreaming on park benches. The falling leaves were like kerchiefs waving goodbye to the gentler season. They fell behind us as we walked through the palace’s golden gate back home to my waiting boots.

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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.

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The departure of sound

Two swans flew low over the pond in the English Garden at Drottningholm Park. Lucy the dog and I stopped to marvel at their construction. Although we had seen many swans during our years of early morning sauntering, today was the first time we took in just how big they were, their wing spans folded out before us, as they swooped down low over the water lilies.

Swans need space, and finally they had got it. The park seemed eerily quiet this morning, and it took a moment to work out as to why. Somewhere in the subconscious of September are swathes of geese occupying the skies, the pathways, the green patches, and the water. Now they were gone, and I reflected upon the small drama that had carried on during the past weeks, without anyone really thinking much about it.

Somewhere in the distance there would be a single cry. Then one or two others would join until the noise had built up to such an intensity that there was nothing to do but for it to become air borne. I searched the skies to see which direction it was coming from, but the sound of geese carried quickly, and it took a few moments before I could see the source of the sound against the autumn sky.

I expected that all would fly in one direction, without hesitation. Most of nature seemed like it was on a confident onward march. To hesitate was human. Closer observation demonstrated that this was not so; I saw it in the sometimes confused patterns of the geese in the sky. At times, just as everyone thought they were heading in one direction, the lead bird swung around and took everyone back to the ground. There could be a lot of complaining on those occasions, but clearly, it hadn’t been the right time to take off.

On other occasions, it was clearly now or never. The deafening gaggle would rise into the sky and vanish into a single dot, the sound rapidly being sucked into it. The degree of drama was most palpable when the geese flew directly overhead. One wondered whether it would rain droppings, but it never did. Lucy noticed that they seemed to take care of that part of life when earthbound.

Now they were gone until the spring, and the silence of winter would begin slowly to seep into every corner of the park. The leaves were falling and would soon cease to rustle, and the many picnickers would withdraw to their fireplaces. I felt sad about it, but knew that when those days of white silence eventually came, I would find a beauty in them too.

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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.

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Healing in the time of harvest

As the summer comes to a slow and tragic close here on my island on the lake, the time of harvesting is a healing. That is, not only a healing of the sadness of losing the summer to the cooler season, but also of the human loss we have sustained during this strange and difficult summer. In my kitchen, the evidence of the end of the season is everywhere. The berries are picked and frozen, the onions hang in bunches from the ceiling, and the first sour apples are on my kitchen counter.

As I stood in my bee house, scraping the wax from each cell the bees had faithfully filled with honey, I listened to the radio. One program after the next considered the Norwegian tragedy and its perpetrator, from all possible angles. Occasionally some reportage about the US budget crisis interrupted, but mostly the radio blurted the lost innocence of the Nordics (if ever there was such a thing). I switched on my centrifuge to drown out the reportage and turned my focus to the honey pouring into the clean bucket. It was pure and constant, produced by just means, each being doing their part in a system that allowed for everyone’s existence – mine and the bees. No being had to desist for the others to exist – there was room for all beings.

Some days later the children gathered in the kitchen; four of them between the ages of five and twelve. They were tasked with bottling 160 kilos (350 pounds) of honey, something which could be seen as child labor, had it not been quite a lot of fun. The children quickly divided up roles. The oldest took the most tricky of jobs, which was filling the jars to just the right level without spilling the honey. The next in age was the “licker,” whose responsibility it was to catch the last drop of honey on a finger before a new jar was pushed under the tap. The third screwed on the tops. The fourth and youngest, a tiny, bleached-blonde mite who fought constantly to make herself heard, was “burk” (meaning jar in Swedish). Whenever “burk” was shouted, the little one hurried with a filled, closed jar to the long dining room table were the final products were gathered. Occasionally, she would try to scuttle along with two, a risky move which immediately provoked protests from the older children, who knew that those small hands could only realistically carry one jar in safety to the long table. My job, according to the children, was the ascertainment of a constant supply of clean, new jars.

During the four hours in which the children bottled honey non-stop, no one ever came into conflict with any of the others. There was laughter, dancing to West African music, and then the occasional common moment of feeling somewhat queasy, having tasted so much of the sweet honey. If only this could be the center of the world and everyone could learn from it, I thought.

At the end of those hours, the children marvelled at their work: a table laden with countless caramel-colored jars. I marvelled at this little team of heroes and thanked life for such healing experiences. We’re going to need many of them as we wake up to what happened this past summer.

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Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s new book, “Rose in the Sand,” her memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island, published through a literary prize from Gather Community Press.

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Playing before the rain

It was the evening before the rain. A long week of summer’s heat had culminated in the air.  The insects danced over the water like crazed performers at a mardi gras. On the dusty hill the roses lived up at the promise of rain, their previously wilted heads now forming pleasing, rounded, multi-layered heads of color and aroma. How did these roses survive at all? They’d been an experiment on this island of sand where everything that we did seemed to challenge the idea that certain things were not possible. In the process of challenging the idea of impossibility, we had found that certain roses do, in fact, manage quite fine in sand. They were the prickly, hardy type that bloomed richly and only once in the season, but with an aroma that made life feel like heaven.

Water now trickled down the hill, over the stones in the impossible waterfall that my husband had built between the islands of roses. Here was another project that wasn’t supposed to work, but as I sat in the “pleasure house” at the foot of the hill, listening to the water wash over the stones, it seemed that there were few experiences that approached perfection as closely as this one. As the sun cast its last evening rays just before the rain, the entire impossible creation – the work of years of believing in the impossible – came into view. I asked myself whether we could have lived without this project and all of the crazy struggles that it entailed. The answer was no, of course. Play – toying with the fantastical – is essential to man. Most of us wouldn’t be here if someone somewhere in time had not toyed with the impossible.

We’d removed the door and many windows of the octagonal pleasure house to let the summer in. The meal was over and we sat watching in that lovely space between dinner and dishes: when the work is done and the thought of the work to be done still has not set in. My husband recounted the story of the mink cubs that had chased one another around our house and played on the fence outside of our cottage. They had no care in the world, as yet untainted by the fear of man and sea eagles. Perhaps it was this that I adored about summers on this rocky island: it seemed an annual return to an untainted time and place; a moment when we did not assume or prejudge, and when direct experience freed us from irony or cynicism. It was a tonic to gain our knowledge from our senses, rather than from the usual screens and bytes.

Now the rain has come and the insects have fled inside. They hurl themselves at my windows, cursing the precipitation that interrupts their play. The ducklings swim desperately after their parents – even those who are perpetually wet seek cover in the rain. The young mink look on, their instincts rising about how they will find food when their parents stop delivering it. Over them the birch branch that should have been blown down many winters ago, hangs playfully over the water. It’s one of those things in this place that just isn’t possible, yet it is still there.

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Rose in the Sand by Julie Lindahl

Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s new book, “Rose in the Sand,” now available in hardcover, paperback and e-book at major on-line outlets. For more about Julie Lindahl visit www.julielindahl.com.

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