Unpaved Roads

I spent some time in Finland in September. I wrote down some impressionistic memories about my first weekend at the Heikkinen’s summerhouse. It’s not meant to be a informing, serious essay about the Finnish way of life or a diligent pondering on nature and culture. Instead it’s a report about what happened when an ignorant Belgian boy was placed in the middle of nowhere and the middle of kind, taciturn people.

The road to Lasanen is not paved. ‘Thís is countryside’, she tells me. I find myself in a wooden house. It smells smoky; tar-like. It’s midnight and I’m tired, exhausted. I have been travelling for several hours. Up north, up north. I have always wanted to go there, never been into sunbathing and playa del Inglés. I have even more incentives such as meeting my love and her siblings and relatives. I am about to discover the Finnish delights at their very best.

Finnish breakfast is decent. And that’s an understatement. Deep dark rye bread, cheese, vegetables. The sweet Belgian breakfasts are not considered ‘real breakfasts’. I am sitting on long bench in an open kitchen. The furniture is a bit eclectic. Bit and pieces from different eras. It does add to the cosiness. And that’s what summerhouses are about, isn’t it? A cosy, private hideout in the woods. And the woods, that’s where we were heading for.

It is ruska, autumn at its best, though the trees are late this years and I can’t see the full colour spectrum. But autumn is more than colours… It’s mushrooms and lots of them. I love mushrooms, I love woods, I love home- and forest-grown food so combining them all feels like an unreal ecstasy. At first there isn’t a lot to pick. A few delicious cantherelles, cleverly disguised as fallen leaves… but the forest turns out the be a mushroom cornucopia! We find lots and lots of cep, the loveliest boleti. We get home and fry them with home-grown garlic and onions… ambrosia.

‘When Petteri’s here, I’ll take him fishing’, her father said. A warming gesture and I’m eager to join. I take all the clothes I have with my and start layering - the secret of keeping warm. I have to borrow some heavy raingear. The lake already starts on the doorstep – it is raining cats and dogs. I have never been fishing before or rather never been really fishing. I had spent some time with my grandfather several years ago on the bank of an artificial pound. We came home with three, four small fish. The cat at my aunts place, Laura, ate them all… my aunt screamed finding the blood on the wall of the garage. Now we arrive near lake Aska. Kalle appears to have a very fancy motorboat, even equipped with a radar. We cast off and he prepares some reels for us. The baits are those fancy metal shiny things. But the fishes, apparently, have already eaten so we fix the nets and check the fish traps. On the way back, a pike gets to interested in the shiny gold and gets caught. In Lasanen – it’s the name of the house- we get lessons in cleaning, gutting and filleting fish. At least you know what you are eating. It’s not a tin nor hypergenically packed packages. It is fish, real fish with blood, intestines and convulsions. The next day we find a spiky perch in the nets. This perch is extraordinary good, combined with mushroom sauce… namnam.

If I say Finland, you reply sauna, right? Lasanen has a sauna with a woodstove. It’s hot, obviously but not arid nor dry. The stove is also used for heating the water. Quite a luxury if you know the sauna’s in an outer building and there are no fancy showers. The vihta, ‘whips’ made of birch branches, is supposed to stimulate the bloodflow and are funny oddities that add to the Finnishness of the sauna. It not a fancy overpriced luxury spa, it’s common sense family sauna. After sauna you feel clean, relaxed and perfectly happy and not participating the consumerist dominant lifestyle.

The only thing still missing in the pictures are berries. Blueberries and lingonberries grow abundantly. I expect berries to grow on certain waist-high bushes, randomly scattered in the forest… but Finnish berries are stubborn. You find then everwhere! The grow on ankle-high shrubberies without white little fences and a path in between then. They cover the soil, not the fallen leaves. It’s back wrecking work to pick the berries by hand, one by one. So the Finns use a ‘combing device’ to rid the bushes of their berries. Amazing!

The three weeks I spent in Finland felt unreal. It was like walking around in Sophie’s world, being amazed by the simple, evident things in live locals wouldn’t notice anymore. It is enriching to spent time with these warm-hearted people who appear to be different in many ways and yet are very alike. It has been said that Finnish nature and Finnish winter are amazing - the first three year you spent there - but I sincerely hope that I will be able to be continuously amazed not just by the Finns and Finland but also about the world and it’s people as whole. And, doing so, do justice to life itself.