Skip to main content

Summer (Cottage) Fun


This is a very selfish post. I am writing it purely to relive memories because, even though I have absolutely loved being at home for this week, eating my mother’s cooking, meeting friends and remembering what 30° (90° for my American friends) weather feels like, part of me misses Finland.

I probably wouldn’t miss it so much if it weren’t for a weekend trip I took before leaving to a friend’s summer cottage. It was quintessentially Finnish. (And then later that week we made hernekeitto and pannukakku. You can’t get more Finnish than that.)

The cottage was tucked away in the middle of woods. Though there were two other cottages not far from ours, we couldn’t see or hear anything from our neighbors, thus giving the illusion that we were completely secluded from the outside world.

Cottages are generally located near a body of water, either a lake or the ocean. This cottage was by a lake. It actually belongs to my friend’s mother who spends almost every weekend as well as six whole weeks of the summer at it. Much of this time is spent doing extensive renovations, most of which she does herself. The cottage is like her baby and I felt honored to be able to stay in it for a weekend.

Those two days were magical. When we woke up in the morning, the sun had already reached the height of the trees and there was light until well past 11. With there being light for so long, my first instinct was to try to fill up the day as much as possible. But that is not the point of being in a summer cottage.

Over that weekend I learned to stop worrying about filling every moment with as much activity as possible or about trying to do everything possible. The go with the flow approach made it easier to savor each moment. It also meant we didn’t get through half of the things we talked about doing so another trip is now a necessity.

My friend talks about the cottage a lot. One evening, he spent the majority of our conversation sharing memories of his father’s cottage when he was young and talking about the renovations. He was enthusiastic so I tried to be a good friend and show excitement but I couldn’t understand the fond attachment. Who would want to spend a summer living in a house where heating it requires you to collect firewood every night?

Two days was all it took to enlighten me. There have been articles about how being in nature improves your mental health and well-being. Something about being in the middle of the woods with only the sound of the water gently lapping against the shore and the wind rustling in the trees is soothing to the mind and soul.

I don’t think I’ll be chopping firewood any time soon. But who knows. I’m going with the flow.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holding Sand

 My mother once gave me the sound advice to avoid holding tightly onto things (she was specifically talking about people at the time) because if you do, they have a habit of slipping away. She did this through a marvelous metaphor that went like this: If you have sand in your hand and make a fist, the sand begins to fall out and you are left with less sand than you started with. If you gently cup you hand and let the sand come in however, it remains in your hand, and you can perhaps even add more. This metaphor has stuck with me because it helped me with the problem that I was having back then. But I’ve come back to it again and again and slowly been realizing the smaller and more subtle ways that I grab onto things. These things are now always visible or tangible, but they still have important implications. Take meditation. I meditate every day. It’s like brushing my teeth, I simply can’t skip this part of my day. But unlike brushing my teeth, which is a methodical and easy ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bagel perfection

Two weeks ago, my husband and I tried making bagels. This wasn't because of some sudden ambition on our part or a particular fondness for baking (though I do like baking if it involves dessert and he is our designated bread maker). It came out of necessity because he has been missing the bagels in NYC that we bought from the local grocery store whenever he visited. We would eat them for breakfast lathered with cream cheese and veggies. They are however, apparently not a thing in Finland so our only option was to make them ourselves. Bagels, in case you don't know are notoriously difficult to make. I knew this. He brushed my doubts aside and said happily "Let's try." Bagels take a day and a half to make. You make the dough, let it rise, shape them, and then let it prove for 12-24 hours before boiling and then baking them. We didn't have some of the ingredients, starting with the right kind of flour. My husband said it didn't matter and powered through. Aft...
Post a Comment
Read more

Becoming Finnish

I have spent the past six months passionately insisting that I will never join in on the uniquely Finnish experience of ice sauna-ing. Ice sauna-ing is a made up word for one of Finnish people’s favorite past times: going to a sauna and then jumping into a freezing lake. My friend is extremely persuasive and after six months of describing her own sauna-ing adventures managed to get me to agree to join her and her husband at a public sauna near a river. The sauna itself is a small wooden building attached to locker rooms and a common area where you can sit and eat after you are done. The first thing that catches your attention is the bridge going out above the water. Around the bridge the water is freely moving but farther out you can see it is frozen over and covered in snow. At the end of the bridge there are six sets of stairs leading into the water. What arrests the eye though is the people walking out onto the bridge wearing swimsuits and confidently walking straig...
Post a Comment
Read more