Steppin' in for my last visit at the public library in Överklaix this summer today- if it can be called summer anymore. The weather at present time and location, Northern Norths of Sweden, is grey and watery. An impenetrable blanket of clouds pulling over the sky in constant, a greater contrast to a past day filled with warmth and sunshine, and temperatures measuring far greater amounts than any recent weather forecasts dared expect. Now the sudden fall is approaching, and cascades of yellow leaves blow across the road in the passing wind. The morning swim in our lake felt icy at least, and outside the thermometer measures 14C, mid day, about to chilliness.
I am unavoidably counting down the days until we leave, not of hopeful anticipation, but of deepening tragedy. The past two years I have spent roughly a fourth of all total time each year, three months, in these civilized areas of grandeuring wilderness. Earlier, with unavoidable school to take up all other time, a rough 1-2 months each year, ever since I was born. The two small estates up north have been in my parents care for 23 years. Now my parents are both retired and I am the binding link that both brings them here and back to the crowded overpopulated concrete jungles mounted in the opposite peak of land. On both greater good and gradual bad. We plan to move up, sometime. And I plan to move out, someday after that.
Inspiration always leaps at me like a flood-wave up here, and I spend my time as I differ come winter more outside than inside, even with the regular intervals of refreshing sleep counted in. I wake up early every morning, with sunshine in my eyeline and a strand of lake blue grand waiting outside the window. We have no computer, no television, no links to any form of brain-grinding entertainment. I hack up shrubbery and trees choking the surrounding green fields with a small axe, paint the various buildings at regular intervals, help scavenge the forest for the coming summers supply of burnable wood, mow the lawns, carry up water from the lake, help expand our small plantation, and rinse it of evil greenery when the time comes. I pick blueberries, cloud-berries, wild raspberries, strawberries and lingon-berries. I fish, swim, paddle, voyage out in the woods by foot or bike, jogg every other day, eat, bake, wake fires to life, read when the rain comes, write when my thoughts flow, socialize when people come to visit, play games when friends and siblings take out their time of vacation. It's a happy yearly era.
I've never spent a full winter up here. They say it's dark, but I'm still saddened by the journey away from this haven of motion as the darkness slowly strides into view. A second burst of summer awaits me in southern Sweden, and my studies, started roughly one week back. I'll be a bit after everyone else when I return, in exactly 11 days (we leave in 10, the trip by car takes a sleepover on way), just like last year. We're leaving earlier now though, and when we all live further up North this transition of life won't be so constant and defying of freedom as it is now. Anyhow, I've read maybe ten more books since my last blog, thick ones, kept me awake very late. Took a long trip by bike in an attempt to reach Överkalix through the maze of forest roads stretching out over green valleys and hills, last Sunday - and made it! I found a little village by a big lake in the middle of nowhere, and many roads leading to many places without any real destination. Of course I don't travel by maps, that would ruing the whole ideal, pah.
So, I'll be back to type in words and stuff and finally update my sleeping sites after this long vacancy the week after the next. Until then.