And off I went, off to the next country, on to the last country of this trip. Back to the first country that really stole my heart and made me feel homesick to it before I realized I was developing an unstopable addiction to Scandinavia. The country of 1000 lakes, which is quite the understatement as its gigantic surface is covered for 10 %, with lakes. And the rest of it, is mainly pinetrees stretching on endlessly, a few curvy roads finding their way through, and a few fairytale cabins popping up every now and then. But it’s mainly lakes you’ll be seeing, whenever the trees decide to move out of your sight. It was the country where, during the first visit, I'd ended up by the weirdest possible circumstances: having quit an internship that did not suit me at all and therefore having only 2 weeks to find a new one. Things happened fast and before I knew I was on my first long trip from home, having just turned 17 and therefore being just as nervous as excited. And now I was about to come back to this second home of mine: Finland.
By now we’re 5 years further and I feel nothing but love for this country, it has a very special place in my heart and I’ve been returning here in very funny ways, either for unexpected connections or for sudden adventurous working possibilities. But now for the first time I would be here for nothing but relaxation, climbing higher than before to the town of Inari, up in the beating heart of Lapland. I would say the difference between Swedish and Finnish Lapland are hardly present, if you’d make an ‘search the differences’ game out of it, the only one would be that in Sweden I spotted some foxes, and in Finland it were the reindeer ruling the streets. Lapland is a synonym for endless pine forests, some lost birches popping up too. It’s the synonym for massive, mysterious lakes, for endless, absolutely endless roads. Having left Abisko, for 4 hours I followed the same road to Finland. It makes you feel incredible to keep following that one path, it makes you feel like you could drive to the other side of the world in ease, at peace. During the whole trip I must have seen no more than 20 cars. I was almost temped to exictely wave at bypassers, as if we found ourselves on a different planet where the curious strangers us humans were, suddenly met. I wanted to stop their cars and scream ‘isn’t this a *bleep* miracle, to enter a world where humans haven’t had any impact, simply built this road to guide us trough it. Getting lost here would almost definitely define the end of your life, unless you’re a trained survivaler that knows which berries kill you and which help you, unless you find a way to first boil the clear but unknown lakewater before drinking.
I played the most suitable, loveable roadtrip hits as I lead the road guide me over hills, on the road that simply kept going, stretching further than my eyes were allowed to see. ‘easy living – uriah heep’ ‘worakls – elea’, and let’s not forget ‘horse with no name – America’. Infinite, invincible, ingenious freedom. That’s all I felt and it was all that mattered, I wanted to feel like this forever. One the way a few stops were necessary, it is very easy to drift off into your dreams when sitting still for so long, staring only ahead. Yet at the same time, the dream world was right in front of me, which made it even more tricky to stay focussed. It was at least a very welcome gift that the sun would always be there, above my head, to get that typical Dutch, rushy feeling of my shoulders and allow me to take my sweet time. The parking spot where I stopped, miraculously enough including 1 car, offered a little hiking route, which was very welcome after all the hours of sitting. So I stretched my legs and dove into the forest, where a curtain of green closed around me the second I entered. This curtain did not only swallow me into an oasis of green, it shut off the entire world behind it. obviously I’m not talking about sounds, nothing but my own music had broken through the silence in the past hour. It was just a feeling, a feeling convincing me that nothing but now, but here, mattered at all. Step by step I followed the carpet of green caused by the most comfortable mosses beneath me, to surprisingly find a bunch of wooden stairs going down so deep that was clueless where it’d be taking me. Besides me, I only saw a deathly stone cliff going downwards into an oasis of black, still water. Interesting enough, too tempting to ignore, let’s do it.
When you walk down stairs for a while, there’s 2 things happening in your brain. First: you start feeling numb, like a robot that only has to put his right leg down, followed by left, again by right. It becomes so automatically that you could easily look around you but still, you maintain focus, don’t fully trust your legs, at least I don’t as I’m aware of my clumsiness. Second: you start panicking very slightly, thinking; ‘well, going up will be fun’ – personally I think stairwalking is one of those exhausting activities life came up with to bully us. But everything comes to an end, also these mysterious wooden stairs into the dept. and I laughed out loud, the musquitos being my only company, as all I found down here was a shallow ditch that was absolutely terrorized by musquitos, that now slowly started moving my way. Despite the bullies I realized the view on my sides was worth watching, as you could see the sharp, stone cliffs that looked dangerously unstable, climb up to the blue sky, that started to get a strange, yellow evening glow. I had about 10 seconds before the musquitos found me and mercilessly destroyed my possibility to catch my breath. Back up I went, I sighed.
Going back up turns out to be a lot easier if you’re being chased by monsters, the closer I got to finland the more they appeared: swarms of musquitos, pulling up like a wall in front of you, a wall that was flexible enough to bend your way if you chose to not cross it. safe and sound I got back in my car and wanted to raise a specific finger to the musquitos that like hungry beasts that couldn’t stand the outside-forest world, drew back behind the trees. They got me well, and I sprayed some cooling anti-itch spray on the parts where they viciously attacked. Then I pushed the gas pedal, and followed the road again, back into my realistic delusion that this was all there was at the world: forest, silence, and this road. Sometimes a little town broke through, existing out of a few colourful houses, a gas station, and a small supermarket. It was adorable how the traffic signs still proved it was a town, and surprisingly difficult to suddenly slow down to half my speed, the driving had became so automated that if an animal would have crossed, I’d probably realize way too late. But all I’d seen besides musquitos, were the majestic poofy tails of orange foxes that realized cars meant danger, and dove back into their endless world of safe green.
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