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“The Great Way Is Made by Going”
“The Great Way is Made by Going”
This passage from the Taoist teaching stayed with me through the day as we wandered into the interior of Finland….
Today in Finland on our day off, we boarded a bus heading North and West out of Helsinki. The skies were dark, full of rain. Eno fell asleep on my lap hearing the story “The Diamond Robbers of London,” a story I have been stitching together in times of transition ever since leaving London. We traveled through thick, forested country spattered with lakes and rivers. It rained harder as the bus paused at rural stops to gather wet school children or drop off country folk with wide Finnish faces.
We deboarded the bus at the intersection of a river and a small country road in the quaint village of Fiskars. A family of Swedes established the settlement in 1653 featuring an iron foundry, copper plant, mill, and farms. Our Helsinki hosts Eija and Anouka had booked a 150-year-old farm house for us to stay in for the night. The home had been part of a dairy farm and in the living room was a photo of a queen-sized dairy cow and a Swede woman in an ankle-length black dress, white apron and jaw the shape of a square box. The upstairs room we stayed in had a ceramic fireplace with a miniature metal door, wood floors and low slanted ceiling.
The homeowner, Kimo, had procured some bicycles for us, and so the three of us biked around the village (population 600). The drizzle was steady; and we were on mishmash bicycles. My wheels whistled and clacked a rhythm of their own when turning. Eno rode a yellow kids bike, two sizes too small for him, that we named the “Bumble-Bee Stinger.” We pumped our legs, gulped the damp air and headed to the local sauna. It is clear that the sauna (in Finnish the “sow” in sauna is pronounced like the sow pig) is a way of life.
We visited a bar here in Helsinki that has a sauna in the back. Eija our host has a small electric one in her apartment–private homes, clubs, restaurants, and hotels all have them. For forty euros we ducked into a handsome wood-crafted sauna adjacent to the Wardshus restaurant. Eno was appointed fire chief to stoke the birch wood burning fire in the foyer fireplace while Surya and I sat, stretched and reclined in the sauna. After teaching events in Belgium, London and Helsinki, the steam vapor off the hot rocks seeped deep into our weary bones.
After a fine country meal of salmon, potato cakes and homemade vanilla ice cream, we pedaled through the rain-strewn evening back to our nook in the attic of the 1850s Finnish farmhouse.
Surya and Eno biking in Finland
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Surya
you are as beautiful as ever!!
I cannot believe how much Eno has grown….
LOVE the yellow bike!