Three days in the wilderness and we are temporarily back in signal range. How do I express the sum total of those 3 days of experiences?
On the one hand there is falling flat on my face, seriously bruising a rib and developing the biggest blisters my heels have ever seen, all within the first two hours of our 7 day ski tour. Let's not forget the bone crunching descents and being buried in a snow drift to my waist, skis and all. But then there's also the amazing scenery. I'm at a loss to understand how there can be so many shades of white, how the endless rolling hills can be both so bleak and so beautiful. The clouds that somehow are always low around here seem to play endless games with the light. I'm forever expecting snow to be unleashed from those dramatic skies, but it seems simply Lapland's version of good weather. However, the best part of the day are the evenings, crawling into the hut for the night, when all the exertion stops for a while and there is little to do but enjoy the warmth of the woodburning stove and devour the ludicrously tasty dried food.
All of this seems to have the most soothing effect on my state of mind, the exertion as much as the rest. I came here last year at this time in so much pain over my fertility test results and left feeling clearer and more settled. This year I'm feeling it, too. Everything falls away, there's just me, my body and this landscape, as if nothing else existed and I guess in that moment it doesn't. The past settles back comfortably where it belongs and concerns for the future beyond the next hut seem irrelevant. Thank you Sweden!
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