Too tired to remember Easter.

Easter passed me by this year.  It’s not because I’m an atheist.  I think beliefs, faiths, meanings are essential to our well being, but very personal and for me not to be culturally regulated.   I believe in love, metaphysics, forgiveness, wild places and regular exercise.  No, it was because I... Read more »

But they don’t get Malaria in Finland!

Certainly not in the north in late winter, they don’t.   How on earth would a mosquito survive temperatures of -10.   But this illness was strange.   I know it’s cold here, but shivering that starts when you are sitting in  a warm room; the shaking that won’t stop despite going to bed... Read more »

Nature cure; a case of living in the moment.

When I read Richard Mabey's book, Nature Cure, I could feel the how removing himself to a cottage in Norfolk for several months cured him of the ennuie and depression that had afflicted him after completing the mammoth enterprise of Flora Brittanica.  The book was like a course of treatment,... Read more »

A cabin in the forest.

I have always yearned for a space to write, my own space, a place where I could close the door away from the obligations and responsibilities and just think and be. .    It was just a few yards from the river, on it's own small peninsula, where the dark stream from... Read more »

Hunter-gatherer 2009

  The white dog froze, one paw raised. The green boat turned slowly, The forest echoed to splash of his oars, Our smoke cast a mist over the water.   He rose from the lake with a grin; a belly roll above battle fatigues, hung out by the fire. I had no beer, no Finnish.    'Fish not good; one so... Read more »

If you go down to the woods today …….

  Dark eyed, tired, seemingly bored with life, they lumber salivating out of the forest dark,  enticed  by the sound of the tractor and the scent of one hundred kilograms of salmon hidden under logs in four caches.  Ursus arctos  may have a muzzle like a dog, but it also bears some... Read more »

It’s summer; so follow the geese, go north!

  Exhausted with the pressure of  work, the bustle and clutter of city life?  Then don't head for the crowded beaches of  the Mediterranean,  follow the geese; go north to Finland.      Arola farm is in the region of Eastern Finland known as Suomussalmi, just south of the Arctic Circle and within sight... Read more »