This empty northern hemisphere

-30° today but I reached for a little bit of summer. I stretched my fingers over soft green moss and remembered how it feels to lay my head back on the moss of the forest floor months from now. The warm glow of the sunlight is never ending because the days are so short, and for seconds sometimes you can really feel the warmth still too.

"The sun never reaching far enough around the sky to melt them away."

Entire rock faces remain covered in the most fine ice crystals. The sun never reaching far enough around the sky to melt them away. Water runs from somewhere above and drips a drop at a time down the icicles. Other drops take a different path landing on a rock face and splashing down catching my face. A little bit of life. It feels nice.

All of me feels warm. My balaclava is covered in frost, and ice crystals dangle down from my fur hood. My toes are warm and cosy in thick wool socks tucked away on a sheepskin insole inside my mukluks. Only my fingers feel cold from handling my camera through my mittens. My fingers and this one small spot that runs along the side of my left hand which always has this cold, tingling feeling when I’m a little bit tired.

It’s an easy solution to warm up my fingers. Just to make a soft fist inside my mittens with my thumb tucked inside to my palms, if I could only put my camera down.

Soft summer moss in a world of winter.

Warm light gradients over a tamarack tree.

Everything’s changed

Shake your hair, have some fun
Forget our mothers and past lovers, forget everyone
Oh I'm so lucky, you are my best friend
Oh there's no one, there's no one who knows me like you do

Remember when we cut our hair?
We both looked like boys, but we didn't care
Stick it out together, like we always do
Oh there's no one, there's no one quite like you

Almost three years apart, but within seconds of spotting each other at the airport, we were right back to old times

My bestest, bestest friend came up for the weekend and this was so, so good for the soul. It was as though time stood completely still these days, while simultaneously feeling like it couldn’t be passing any faster.

We enjoyed cold city walks with thermoses full of glühwein, and hours far out in the countryside. Back home, we drank copious amounts of coffee with equal parts home made stollen. Canuck and Leaf games were thoroughly suffered through enjoyed. The northern lights were spotted dancing from the windows of the same but changed home. And endless heart to hearts led to a few tears. And of course laughing fits did too.

For a weekend, it really felt like everything is going to be okay.

The bigger picture

I was up early on this morning. Well before the sun made it over the hill on the other side of the lake. A sun dog was already visible, and it was so beautiful. It felt like a true December morning. The sky was completely clear. The trees outside my house were covered entirely in hoar frost, and the exhaust from the vents of all the homes was vibrant orange, catching the sunlight.

I had my toasted bagel as I almost always do, along with a sweet persimmon, but I took my coffee in my thermos for later. It has never been about the caffeine for me, purely just the mood and the enjoyment.

Imagination or not, my first steps through the forest smelled of winter in Sweden. It was, by all means, completely improbable, but it was exactly so. I stopped dead in my tracks and didn’t move for minutes. I just could not mistake that, it was certain. I had not been in the north of Sweden since 13 years, but in a heartbeat I felt like I was right in the forests of Jukkasjärvi again. And I really needed that. In just a perfect synchronicity, today was the most fitting day of all for that. I took a photo, made a quiet promise to never forget it, and kept walking.

Of course it is the best way to finish the day in the cold, around -27°C. A hot coffee and the last of the sunlight.

A lesson from the ice

“This business kills the part of life that is essential… The part that has nothing to do with business.”

There is a scene at the end of The Big Short, my favourite movie, where Michael Burry writes to his investors announcing that he must close down the fund. He has finally been proven right, but a part of him is broken.

"For the past two years, my insides have felt like they're eating themselves."

The temperature was -36°C. I never had heard the ice so loud and violent. The sharp thundering you couldn’t imagine. The vibrations of the ice travelled into my body from my tripod and camera. I felt a crack form under my feet in real time.

Each rumble sent shivers up my body and made my heart beat more noticably, but I was standing in the middle of a frozen lake, on ice I had no idea the thickness of. Centimetres of snow covered the ice, and for hours before the aurora covered the sky, it was just in starlight. The power of nature was overwhelming, and the beauty of a moment was strong, but there was something much more too.

I didn’t for a moment have any fight or flight. No instinct to even move. The ice would be what it would be, and I would just let it, and take from it what beauty I could. I was in the middle of it, the literal middle, and I had no control, and it actually felt really good. Like something I needed. A broken soul, reaching maybe just a place of acceptance.

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"People want an authority to tell them how to value things, but they choose this authority not based on facts or results. They choose it because it seems authoritative and familiar."

When the pale light fades

62.45°N

It isn’t as far north as I would love to live, but it is still an environment I love a lot. The days are short by any normal standard of living, but I wish they were shorter.
Waking up after 9 and getting a cup of hot coffee in my hands to stand at the window and watch magnificent winter sunrises that last forever is something I will always cherish of this place.

Finally some centimetres of snow fell over the weekend, likely burying any last remaining clear lake ice. It feels so wrong that we reach winter solstice in under one month already. Like the short days of always golden sunlight, orange clouds, and midday twilight just don’t last long enough.

How can you make sense of this overwhelming love of winter? The deprivation of sunlight giving deeper meaning to the presence of it maybe. Feeling the sunlight hit my face this time of year is magical. Just like all of winter, those little moments slow me down to absorb more. Molasses, ginger, cardamom and allspice bring this comforting warmth inside, and I am sure coffee never tastes better. Warmth of a candle or a car vent mean so much. I crave to sleep a lot, and to be wrapped up in soft and cosy fabrics.

So for this feeling of home which the depth of winter brings me? Maybe it is the sharp contrasts leading to greater recognition. More conscious recognition and loving-on. The dark and the light, the warm and cold, like drinking a hot coffee sitting in -33°. Maybe it is something more innate, something in my bones or my soul, or something picked up somewhere along my way.

But for right now with tired eyes in dim lighting, I tuck away in my linen bedding, pushing aside half a mountain of pillows, and in 7 hours maybe I’ll be awake for sunrise, but maybe I’ll sleep right through it. Either way it’s okay, because winter is for slowing down and staying cosy. So let the winter winds blow, the snow drifts grow, and the dim window lights continue to glow.