Life, with the national park
Location: Nordkoster, Sweden • • • Visit: August 2014
Now I’m on the road again. Sitting on a train, headed west. To Strömstad, the home of the Smith clan, my paternal grandmother’s father’s family. Our end destination is Koster, a group of islands just outside of Strömstad. As a matter of fact, the most western community in Sweden. After that comes Norway, Scotland, and the Atlantic ocean. My dad went there every summer growing up, and for a long time, so did I. But now I haven’t been since the summer after high school graduation, in 2007. But now we’re on our way, me, dad, Anna and brother, aunt Eva, uncle Terence, my two cousins and their families, my grandmother’s two sisters and some of my dad’s cousins. Almost the entire Ragnar Smith clan – of which no one is named Smith anymore. I’m actually quite excited. In my opinion, it’s one of the most beautiful places in Sweden.
Being on the border to Norway, the cellphone network received there is Norwegian more often than Swedish, so I’ve decided to turn off the internet function on my phone and go analogue. I don’t have my laptop with me either.
So, the plan is this: I’ll read books and write in my notebook and take long walks on the cliffs by the ocean while listening to podcasts about literature and philosophy and world events. I’ll take photographs and make notes, that I’ll then transcribe when I’m home again. I’ll spend time with my family. I’m looking forward to the quiet. And the waves. Salt in the air. The highland cattle in the national park. The cliffs and crevices that I know so well, the perfect spots for hiding away, reading for an entire day. The wind that will almost blow you away.
I’m on the train. We’ve been traveling across Sweden, east to west, through this very patchy landscape we get in the middle. Small fields, golden among the otherwise dense green of early August. For five hours I’ve been sitting here. There’s only half an hour left. Then, the ocean. My head feels weird. I think I need breeze.
I’m thinking about traveling. And about my need for order. About roots, and landscapes, and about feeling that you belong. I’m thinking about how my handwriting seems to change depending on my mood and the pen I’m using – from neat and pretty to almost unintelligible. I’m thinking about family. Mine in particular. The legacies we carry, the priorities we are taught. I’m thinking about other people’s minds. And a dog.
Cecilia and Isak have bought a dog. Natalia turned 26 and yesterday she had a picnic to celebrate. Cecilia and Isak arrived by bike, Cecilia with a bag on her chest, the tiny head of a black cockapoo puppy looking out. Possibly the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. The curiosity and joy and presence. Like a magnet she pulled everyone to her, to the now, away from whatever work or studies or future they were discussing.
I need that. An anchor, to keep me grounded. Otherwise, I risk floating away. That’s how my mind works. I grew up among animals, the very hands-on activity of taking care of horses. It taught me balance. A way to restrict my mind.
But it’s been years now, since I had the responsibility to take care of another living creature. I get lost in my own head.
Tilda and Kai, my cousins’ two-year-olds, are running around in the train carriage. Children are great anchors too. But having a child for the sole purpose of having something to keep me in the present, that’s way too egocentric and selfish, even for me. I can’t afford to have a horse.
But maybe a dog. Or a borrowed horse, from someone who can’t take care of it every day. I will have to look into that. The year I have ahead of me, thesis work, holds a high risk of me loosing my footing. Like never before.
The heat followed us out to the island. The sun went down in the Skagerrak, and I went for a swim with dad.
Families are complicated things. I knew that. I just haven’t been reminded for some time.
Structures by the sea. Waves and wind sculpt what uneasy tectonic plates left here millions of years ago. The lines and curves, soft surfaces and rough edges, all collaborating to feed my gluttonous eyes.
It fills me with a kind of calm. These thousands-of-years-old art pieces on a million-year-old canvas. There’s no rush. Time will tell.
I’m sitting on a cliff, watching the heavy clouds come rolling in. I’ve been walking on the bedrock outcrops today and discussed fieldwork methodology with my cousin Ellen. Been swimming twice.
But all the while, we’ve been waiting. The heat has been pressing, choking, strangling. Everything is yellow here. The water in the well is turbid because the surface of the groundwater table is reaching the well’s bottom. The meteorologists have said it would rain today, but the purple clouds have stayed as dramatic trimming on the horizon over the mainland. The sunshine has been paralyzing.
But now, they’re rolling in. Like a blanket, blocking out the sun, making dusk come several hours early.
Thunder has been rumbling for an hour.
I feel the first drops fall on my head.
Now it’s pouring.
I danced in the rain. The drops were big and plentiful. Like having a shower under the open sky, washing the salt from my ocean swims off my skin.
Then sitting in the rocking chair, watching the rain slowly recede, while the feeding of the young took place behind me. Families are complicated things, and children all-consuming creatures.
But now the house is quiet, except for the grasshoppers’ melody slipping in through the open windows. It’s pitch-black outside.
The air is tangible, soft, and smells like a children’s choir singing Handel’s Hallelujah.
I walked over the cliffs today to my special crevice. I’ve been going there since my early teens, hidden behind high cliffs on a headland is a crack in the rock shaped like an armchair made for my back. Protected against the most extreme Atlantic winds, but still with a view of the waves crashing against the rocks below, I’ve written, read and thought many big thoughts.
I haven’t been here for seven years, but still it was surprisingly easy to find my way back. It’s like the bluffs and rocks have become part of my internal geography, forever part of my mental map of the world.
But I only had time to eat my lunch and read five poems, before thunder started rumbling like an old grumpy man over the mainland. Three poems later, the drops started falling.
There is something beautiful about those first moments of rain. The drops fall on the dry rock, creating a dotted pattern with the darker, richer colors of the wet stone. The smell, too, is something very special.
Thinking that this might become as dramatic a rainfall as the one yesterday, I tried to find the fastest way back to the main trail. But I couldn’t know if the narrow paths that I found among the heather and the junipers were human or grazer made, leading me back to civilization, or if following them would take me to a destination only logical for sheep.
Suddenly, I came upon a wet clearing. There, I met a tree. A beautiful old rowan, with branches growing in all directions. The trunk light grey. It made me think of the weirwood trees of Game of Thrones. There is a wisdom in old trees, the perseverance in having survived on the edge of an ocean. The thunder and rain kept on coming, so I didn’t stay long, but we shared a moment, and then I walked on. I will probably never be able to find it again.
I finally reached the main trail. By the time I was back at the house, the rain was done falling for the day.
I met a birch. Weird, but incredibly beautiful.
I wanted to photograph us together, but working with a self-timer is not easy. It took many scratches, bruises, sore muscles and even some bloodshed, before we were finally caught together by the camera sensor. Totally worth it, though.
There are places that stick. Where belonging isn’t an issue, where getting lost doesn’t feel threatening because it is all part of you. Where pieces of you can fall into place, possibly rearranged after times of great change, but still keeping the essence of you. A place where breathing is a sufficient purpose for existence.
For me, this is such a place. It doesn’t really make sense, I spent a couple of weeks every summer here between ten and nineteen, there are places where I’ve spent more time, where I’ve experienced more things. But, I don’t know, there’s just something about this place. I’m sitting on a cliff watching the glittering waves, and I feel like I could melt into the rock, right here, and be perfectly content. I feel I belong.
Maybe this is what the landscape of my soul looks like. Rugged cliffs and hard rock, weird trees, shy sheep and fluttering butterflies. Difficult to access, but full of hidden crevices and beaches of calm. Not for everyone, but beautiful for those who have the patience to give it some time.
I’m sitting on my spot. The water is calm today. The clouds are heavy, bordered in deep blue, but they seem content with it. Rain hasn’t been promised until tonight. I’m going to take a swim, the last, and then the ferry will take me to Strömstad, to the train and home. One week left of summer holiday, then the thesis work begins.
Believe it or not, but I am really looking forward to it. Ready again to dig my teeth into the tedious work that is the dry and challenging world of academia. This week has really done me good. I feel like I’ve found my way back to myself.
Katja Malmborg 