Ski week
At the end of March there are a couple of weeks in Lapland where the sun stays high in the sky into the evening. The ground is covered in a plush layer of snow, like whipped cream on crushed Oreos.
We prepared for our trip to the land of marshmallow winter. David skiied for hours every weekend. I did not. We watched the Winter Olympics with a religious regularity, so chock-full of raw humanity it felt like we were the ones collapsing in Lycra across the finish line.
The train to Akaslampolo left at 8pm so we had dinner at an Italian restaurant in the station. We boarded and bunked in the same car as 40 twelve-year olds that didn’t use their beds for anything other than storing their Burger King bags and kicking each other in the face.
We woke and split the curtains open. The world was totally white with evergreens poking through the landscape. The sky was bright blue. We got coffee and porridge from the dining car and watched the line for drip coffee snake back to the entrance, then shrink, then snake back again depending on how moody the cashier was feeling.
The bus from the train to our inn dropped us off twenty minutes away. We schlepped our bags like the crew of an ice-locked ship on the North Pole. There were racks waiting to hold our skinny skis. There were hand-knit slippers to put on once you removed your boots. It was a fit-for-purpose kind of place.
Everyday, we’d start with porridge and black coffee. In the morning, the world was blue and the snow was icy. I usually fell at least three times right away because the tracks were so fast. I concentrated all the parts of learning a new sport into three days: delight, failure, ecstasy, dismay, embarrassment, bruising, etc.
We skiied all day, every day, but every burst of action was mercifully en route to a hut that served molkki and tea.
The trails would inevitably lead us to the mouth of the village. Around 4pm we would de-ski and order two beers from the brewery connected to the strip mall connected to the ski rental facility. Finns love a good mall.
There were skiiers in technical gear, tight hats and leggings and zip-up jackets, fluorescent pink and orange and green. Then, like a little swirl of icing, they might wear a cylindrical knit cap with fair isle designs around the perimeter, and a red tassel on top. I saw several people in oval, dark-lensed, golden-framed sunglass. Like the ski patrol for a Lappish prince from a bygone era, flushing out wolves and bandits from the woods.
We made friends at the inn. They were older Dutch people living in Australia. They were tan and blonde. Their tans sunk deep into their skin. They had struck a deal with the sun a long time ago and it set up shop in their abdomen. They just finished a dog-sledding trip, and were on a two-month odyssey of Europe, visiting children, friends, pets, houses. He worked in oil.
The day before we left, we skiied down to the inn and took off our skis. A woman stood in the parking lot and started talking to us in Finnish. At some point she switched to English and asked if there was any lunch served there, but there wasn’t. She looked around and said It’s kind of dead here isn’t it? It was, really only the trees rustled and even then, everything was so frozen it felt skeletal. This place is for sale. 500k euros. She drank some water and headed back to the trail. I checked online, the inn was for sale. The next morning I narrowed my eyes at the sparse breakfast crowd.
We took a taxi to a bus, a bus to the airport, then a plane to Helsinki. It was bright and sunny, cold and windy. Spring was still months away.
