Silent Echoes

Exploring Isolation Amidst Nature's Embrace

Aug 04, 2023

I want to explain what it feels like to step into my old world and re-encounter the loneliness and isolation but also the beauty and belonging that permeated my first life in the far North. In 2023 I visited my home village in Finland and the photos and reflections are from that trip.

Is it the size of the leaves or the shy light of northern latitudes with those long shadows? Or is it the cool air, always carrying a hint of evening chill on a summer day, that expands the lungs to their fullest capacity with birch, clover, and wild plants that I have forgotten the names of? And always with a hint of manure that has traveled four valleys to mix itself with the pine trees on our hill and leave the mind wondering whether the clothes hung to dry will smell of it (they will.)

Could it be that the climbing tree’s lowest and most generous branch was amputated and the only way the birch knew how to recover was to grow taller? Perhaps if I had walked down to the barn to look why they have put a white covering on the door, or walked behind the barn to the small ice-skating pond to see if it still was there, or to the gigantic ice-age boulder below the hill to see if I still could climb to the flat top?

The moss grew when we stopped walking on the stone hedge. That is what I tell myself. It is now covered and tired, and only small animals hide in between the boulders once lifted in place by my ancestors. Or perhaps it can finally breathe and flourish and expand. Once I knew many of the rocks, which ones moved when I stepped on them and which were firmly wedged and supported small feet.

Do roads also have tree rings? Each year (or season?) generating an archeological and chronological album of sand, rocks, silt, pollen, leaves, dead animals — and foot prints. There, somewhere below the surface, I walked into the river again and again.

The comforting smell of old grain and dust and the patter of rain drops on the tin roof just above the head. A tiny and dark upstairs nook in a barn was worth a small window? Then small windows were enough, when small eyes peered out through them and loved them several generations after the builders installed them. The small windows. They were the most beautiful. Small windows frame the world and limit it to its essence and allow stillness to reign inside. Small windows permit the viewer to ignore what’s beyond and build on what’s inside. Fantasy is inside.

The shell (the house) and the towering magical maple trees. The strange plants that have wrestled themselves into place after the gardener’s originals no longer could fend for themselves among the wild ones. What generation must it be in the plant world by now? Will they recognize my foot steps?

And the road. I drive it haltingly, at first, with stick shift and pass memory after memory that has vanished and mutated. I look for it, no search for it — the source, the origin, that which makes it different now today.

One rainy day I drive past strangers (are they?) in my old home town. One of them walks with slightly bowlegged steps, as if each step both weighs him down and reassures that the next one is important. Then the windshield wipers hide them and I sit behind the window and look at the world that is sealed off from me.

Then the scent that transcends all ages and eras. The perfume of the sea. Water, about 1% sodium chloride and then the organic matter that acts as the regional fragrance. There is a cinematic trick you can see sometimes in modern films, when everything around the protagonist sucks in as if by a sudden vacuum. Things get blurry in the periphery and only the human in the center remains in focus. This is the equivalent effect of the scent of the Gulf of Bothnia. It is a time machine propelled by olfactory sensors and amplified with closed eyes.

Destination? 1 million years back to a period of post-glacial rebound that is still going on today. There, on the proto-shores of Kvarken, I stand and breathe. Alone. Just one breath. It is not permitted to stay longer. Then, the same cinematic effect but in reverse hurls me back to the modern day shore. I look down at the broken reeds. They form mysterious patterns. Messages about something that once was and now wishes to tell us… something? But the wind chases away the thoughts. It is not for humans.

Then the taste of the berry that should be picked when alone with ones thoughts. Often while chased by mosquitos, and even more often while half-intoxicated by the scent of the wild seaside herbs and plants that are in a mad stampede to grow and bloom and reproduce before Fall takes them. There, somewhere close to the black humus covered soil, they are. The Arctic raspberry.

Reverently, most reverently of all picked berries, they are placed in the bare palm of my hand. They must not be crushed. They are almost too fragile for this climate yet they exist. I find two and experience a brief flush of joy similar to that from childhood. I stumble back over hidden roots and through thickets of young aspen. When was the last time I walked in wilderness?

I taste the berries. Within each berry is a world full of stars.

In dreams the attic symbolizes the higher subconscious mind and hidden memories. My sisters and I climb up, testing each step before taking the next. The house is now a shell and the life force is almost gone. Something hangs in the air and lingers, and we’re here to try to catch it. We touch things we remember and declare the old moments. We hold things that were dear to us and sometimes we look in silence and keep some memories to ourselves.

We stand in the ship of time and we daren’t walk out on the bridge because it might not hold us any longer. The captain is long gone and the 180 degree views out over the road, the hill, the fields, the forests, and the clouds are gifted to us for only a moment.

Today I noticed something I didn’t then. Small slits to the outside have begun to appear below one of the windows. The shell, the house, wants out.

Why is it so still? Stiller than anywhere else. Is it the size of the leaves or the mist in the valley? Is gravity stronger here? Perhaps everyone else in this village feel it too and sometimes linger in it for a while, secretly. Something here is holding its breath.

Cabinet of Curiosities

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