Sylvia's Journal

We spent a week in the Loire Valley, between Nantes and Angers. We stayed in stately old chateau (it is available on Airbnb, here), the ancestral home of a dear friend who invited us and some others to accompany him and his wife to the chateau. We learned about the interesting bi-continental family that started when a French artist married his American wife. Their offspring settled either in France or in the US and some in both places. As a result, there are now dozens of cousins who speak English, French, or both. 

We were settled in the ‘red room’ with its 14 feet ceiling and large windows looking out on the spectacular grounds on one side and on another wing on the other. The windows have three positions: closed, wide open or half open with some ingenuous hardware that keeps them in that half open position. There are no screens which means we had to share our living quarters with flies during the day (especially in the kitchen), big noisy flying creatures at night that were attracted by our lights, and occasionally bats.

I learned that bats are an integral part of the biodiversity that creates the world’s most famous grapes. They don’t only eat mosquitoes (of which there were few, may be because of them) but also the grape worm and other pests that would affect the harvest. Once you know that, all thoughts of tennis rackets or baseball bats (so often used in the US to get rid of these creatures) evaporate. It is about co-existence. And the flies in the kitchen? You get used to that. I grew up in a house without screens and was used to wasps and bees and flies freely flying in and out of the house. Now, in the US, if we spot one fly in the house, we go after it with a vengeance. It’s all about context!

Of course, we drunk much wine, which was produced by the vineyards belonging to the chateau or to other chateaux. We did not visit a vineyard and now I wished I had because our fellow travelers did. They brought back interesting literature about wine making and biodiversity.

Since the internet had been knocked out by a storm before we arrived, we never had access to the whole wide world. I had not bought a French sim card. I had bought an E-Simcard in the US that I never got to work (which is a whole other story). I turned my phone off for the entire week. At first it was a little strange to not be able to look something up, send pictures and messages, but I soon got used to it, and liked it. Of course, I knew that the next week I would be fully connected again, and had a husband who was connected.

The cooking responsibilities were fluid and easy. We bought fabulous food at an outdoor market where we could have easily stayed a whole day and buy three times as we could possibly eat in a week. The cheeses, the sausages, the seafood (mussels, live langoustines – related to crawdaddies), and vegetables were all very tempting. In our little group we had people who loved to cook and improvise (using the refrigerator remains from the previous group that had stayed there – we called this soupe-frigo), and we had people who liked to clean up. It was all very easy and amicable which is not to be taken for granted when you live with people you have never lived with and even some we didn’t know before we got there.

We had access to enormous variety of produce from the chateau’s ‘potager.’ A large patch of land that was leased to a professional grower who serves restaurants nearby, and us if we so desired. It was enclosed by a 2-meter-high stone wall to keep the wildlife out.  We learned that everything was grown organically and in alignment with the phases of the moon and the mood of the universe. 

The chateau has an ‘Orangerie,’ where the countless citrus trees overwinter. In the summer they are outside. They were heavy with fruit:  oranges, lemons, kumquats, limes, and all sorts of other citrus varieties I don’t know the name of. While these trees are outside, the inside is taken over by one of the cousins who is an artist and holds workshops there. We had full access to the space. Axel produced a lovely woodcut of a water lily, one of the many flowering plants around us. The sights and views inspired me to create a treasure hunt in rhyme. It was a place that instantly released our creative juices.

When my in-laws lived here (from the early 50s until my mother-in-law died in 1993) the house they lived in remained essentially the same. They moved from one side of the house to the other and made only one change, removing a wall to make their TV room bigger. That was all, in all these years.

I remember when we visited them, before 1993, this was a quiet neighborhood with only the sound of the foghorn, waves, and seagulls. We experienced this kind of quiet in Finland. Coming back was a rude awakening. For one, we have a construction project in our backyard. It already made for one noisy summer last year when the foundation and framing was done and continues to do so now. Masons cladded the chimney with fieldstones that had to be lifted onto scaffolding using a squeaky flywheel and cut noisily with a stone cutter, from early morning till the end of the afternoon. This lasted for weeks. And now that this is done people across the cove are building a new house in and on the rocks which has required blasting and now produces loud noises from big trucks that are being loaded with rock debris. And when the construction noises calm down there are the landscapers with their noisy and polluting gas-powered landscaping equipment, mowers, blowers, and trimmers. It is never quiet anymore.

This morning when I walked around the small peninsula where we live, I counted 7 construction sites and 12 houses that weren’t there, or didn’t look at all as they do now, when my in-laws lived here. I sometimes wished I could take my long-gone in-laws for a walk around the neighborhood and watch their expressions. 

I know what has changed. When Axel grew up here, most houses were summer houses and at that time, summer houses were for the summer, not requiring the same creature comforts as their rest-of-the-year homes. People who lived here all year round like my husband’s parents, weren’t wealthy. Now our neighborhood is populated all year round; properties are snatched up by people with much wealth who either pull down the old houses or renovate, leaving only the bare house frames intact.  For years now there hasn’t been a summer without some construction project nearby. On the day Axel’s mother died we got phone calls from real estate developers asking whether we were going to sell. We now have several real estate companies in town and construction companies, all running booming businesses, creating more wealth and more wishes for more and better.

Everyone seems to be bitten by the bug that whispers in our ears (“not good enough”) – even we are bitten by that same bug. All the advertisers and happiness gurus are telling us that we could be happier, if only we lose some weight, buy this or that, get new clothes, renovate our kitchen or bathroom, or meditate every morning.  I did the latter for 2 years and have stopped doing so. It didn’t make me happier or calmer.

Knowing that most people in the world are sleeping in hot and buggy places, without screens on the windows or air-conditioning, and millions don’t even have a home, I wonder how we could ever be dissatisfied with the beauty and abundance around us. If only we could be satisfied with what we have, rather than indulge in dreams about more and better.

Hours after we arrived back home from Finland, we found two carloads of people in our driveway. A friend had left messages on our phones while we were in the air to ask if she could come by with her family and guests to swim and play in Lobster Cove. And then our grandkids arrived and moved in for a week that included a camp in the area for our granddaughter and much down time for our grandson filled with Lego building and, when no one paid attention, screen time.

I was back to work with a rather hectic schedule that included much screen time as well but provided some income to pay off our Finland credit card debt.

The rest of July passed quickly, as summertime tends to do. July is a birthday month for three of our family members who all reached a birthday with a 7 in it: Tessa turned 37 on July 2^nd, Saffi turned 7 on July 25^th and Axel turned 76 on July 30^th. So, it was party time!

On July 30 we celebrated all 3 birthdays with a Lobster Cove beach party which was made even more riotous than it would have been any other year. Tessa’s gift to Saffi was an enormous blow-up unicorn (which took some ingenuity and time to blow up) that can sit 6 adults comfortably (including 4 cupholders and space for a cooler) and many more kids. Once it was blown up the kids played in it on dry land for a while before it was transported on the heads of two adults into lobster Cove where it remained the rest of the afternoon to entertain kids and adults alike.  Having a unicorn like that in our backyard inspired me to write a story (that has no ending yet) about Saffi and her unicorn. I hope it can attract an illustrator and ideas for adventures (here) – a crowdsourced book if you will.

At some point a police officer arrived to inquire who was partying since someone had called the police to complain. We told him we lived here, and he apologized. We wondered who the anonymous caller was. We think it may have been a neighbor across the Cove who treats part of the beach below her house as private property and had noticed some people had installed themselves for the day. It’s an attitude that galls me – this concept of ‘mine’ when a beach should be for everyone to enjoy, especially when the temperature rises above 90 degrees (F). The legal rights of coastal property owners are unclear and open to some interpretations – lawyers seem to be the only ones who always benefit from this ambiguity.

We only deal with this issue when dogs come running into our yard, sometimes crap there, lick out pans used for outdoor cooking, or lick me while snoozing in a hammock. These dogs are poorly trained and do not listen to their owners’ calls. I have no patience with dog owners who cannot control their dogs. They come to our beach because the main Manchester beach (Singing Beach) is closed to dogs between May and October. If the dogs stay on the beach and their owners pick up their poop, I am fine with dogs and people alike enjoying Lobster Cove. 

We completed the archipelago tour with an overnight at the edge of an island where a ferry was to take us further north the next day. After our splurge the night before we reserved a hut, happy to find a place at all, and not paying much attention to the details of our accommodation. Inexpensive, we thought.

As it turned out the ‘hut’ we reserved was a charming rustic one room hut (indeed) with four bunkbeds, a miniature kitchen and a porch. No toilet (ouch). Only the tiny window in the back of the hut opened and had a screen, the first screen we saw on a window since we arrived in Finland. We soon understood why. There were mosquitoes, midges and large meat eating flies. Unfortunately the large front window did not open and so there was no air moving in the hut, this on the hottest day so far (31C). I was reminded of sleeping in one star hotels in the Sahel, and that a good part of the world population lives in those conditions night after night. We have gotten so spoiled by AC. And so it was an endless uncomfortable night.

The next morning we lined up for the ferry to make sure we got on as it would only go 4 times a day. On the 1st of July Finland’s summer tourist season starts in all earnest. So far we had marveled at the empty roads and restaurants. Compared to New England, it still feels very empty.

There were more ferries to hop from island to island. The next ferry, like poorly aligned traffic lights, wasn’t going for another 3 hours. Luckily there was a small coffee shop (these are ubiquitous here as the Fins, apparently, drink more coffee than anyone else) a few 100 meters from the embarkation point. Even better, there were open faced salmon sandwiches which I washed away with a spruce root Prosecco from Lapland. Walking back there were sweet wild strawberries growing along the road.

All along the way we shared the road with bike riders. Apparently the 250 kilometer archipelago bike trail is a popular summer outing. We saw fully loaded bikes with people sweating in 30 degree heat over undulating roads. It would have been a good reason to have an e-bike but we saw very few of those.

Once we had completed the trail in the comfort of our air conditioned car, we returned to the familiar surroundings of our Finnish home and collected the usual ingredients for dinner: gravlax and cold smoked salmon, fresh peas, freshly dug potatoes and strawberries, all bought by ‘the liter.’ We will probably be tired of this dinner when it is time to go home, and will have to make do with the US version of it all.

We are on one of the islands in the archipelago in Finlands’s southwestern corner. It reminds us very much of Maine, except for the signage with long words that contain lots of vowels. The Finnish summers are short and intense with daylight that pretty much lasts throughout the night. It never gets dark. It is lovely, now, but the price paid for that is the opposite during the winter, much darkness and very little light.

We have exchanged our home and car with a Finnish couple for two weeks. Most of that time we are spending near the old capital of Turku, an old sea port that faces Sweden. We are not only exploring the country side and the city of Turku, but also Finland’s history and its complex relationship with its mighty neighbor. And then of course there is the cuisine: fish, in particular salmon and herring prepared in countless different ways, baby potatoes, fresh peas, countless varieties of the sweetest strawberries (so many hours of daylight makes for the most amazing berries), delicious pastries and all things licorice (ice cream, gin, aquavit, sauce for over ice cream).

When you exchange house and car you end up saving much money which can then be used for splurging on lunches (our breakfasts and dinners are made at home) and occasionally on a hotel when we make an outing that takes us away from our base. We’re right now on the archipelago trail, going from island to island, near the mainland by bridge, further into the archipelago by ferry, mostly short and free, sometimes longer and paid.

Even though it is summer and the schools are out, compared to New England what we have seen of Finland so far feels empty. Hotels and B&Bs have rooms available on a very short notice, traffic is sparse and we have yet to experience a traffic jam. Even on our ride from Helsinki to Turku on the E18 (which connects Saint Petersburg with Kristiansand in the south of Norway) we saw very little traffic, making us wonder where everyone is. But then again, everyone means only 5.5 million people (by comparison, Massachusetts alone has 6.5 million people). Still, in this summer paradise, where are the people? With summers this short and sweet, why would you want to go anywhere else?

The best part of this vacation is the continuous downtime, something I have not had for years, maybe even decades. I am not checking email, doing my portable jigsaw puzzles, and reading actual paper books. As a result I fall asleep easily, sleep well (even though it never gets dark), wake early and go to bed late.

Over the years it seemed that more and more people have woken up to the dangers we have been creating for ourselves: the toxins in our wheat and fields, the processed food, the pollution of water and air, the increasing number of traumatized people, toxic leadership responsible for so many geopolitical catastrophes in the world.  There appeared to be a recognition that we can no longer solve our problems by thinking only of our ourselves, our needs, wishes and wants, because whenever we did, our solutions simply created more problems (mostly for others). Our interdependencies are now more obvious than ever before.

And so, I thought we were finally on a path to planetary peace. I have seen the momentum built up over the past decades (actually, since the end of WWII).  So many individuals and groups were recognizing that not doing anything was no longer an option, and then set to work with others to pursue this path, buoyed by the limitless energy and idealism of younger people. And then Putin made the U-turn. It wasn’t sudden by any means, he had been moving over to the inner lane for a long time, but there it was, bombs and all. Instead of planetary peace we now have planetary inflammation. 

I keep thinking of Mr. Rogers’ ‘look for the helpers.’ For any of the world’s catastrophes (whether self-generated or befalling us) I see an overwhelming positive response. Whether it is food or geopolitical conflict, there are more people standing up for the voiceless, and recognizing our responsibilities towards the 7^thgeneration than those who seem determined to erase the prospects of a livable future for all.

For two years now we have been trying to consummate a home exchange with a couple from Turku, Finland.  Last week they wrote to us asking whether we would cancel (once again) our exchange, fearing to travel to Finland, the country with an 800+ mile border with Russia. Other exchangers, from Colorado, had already canceled, and they were wondering about us. “Not unless WWIII breaks out,” we decided. Finland is of course a special case. It was exactly 82 years ago that the Finns learned it could not count on anything as close to a united Europe we see now. On March 12, 1940, they signed an unfavorable treaty with their big and powerful neighbor that included ceding a part of their land (Karelia) and allow the construction of a Soviet naval base on the Hanko Peninsula.

We went ahead and bought our tickets to Helsinki for June, counting on wisdom and altruism to prevail in the world.