Finland Wilderness Training, Day 2, Part 2 - New Years Eve and contemplation of the year ahead

It’s a very simple existence at base camp.  There is typically only one organized activity a day and the rest of the time is reserved for individually practicing the skills we have learnt or taking advantage of the wellness facilities of hot tub and sauna which this week are surprisingly underutilized. During my daily pilgrimage across camp from cabin to spa only once or twice do I have company.   Once I have grappled with the heavily insulated cover a few times I work out a way to manhandle it from the top of the hot tub without losing more than one nail or taking a hard clout on the leg. Then I slip off my clothes down to my swimsuit and can instantly feel the freezing air begin to cling to the moisture on my skin. Hopping up the couple of steps to the rim I balance on the edge and swing my legs over and slip slowly into the steaming water taking my time and enjoying the sensation of heat slowly working its way up my body. With my head leant against the wooden rim I enjoy the peace and the tranquility and lie gazing into the darkness of the trees, watching the vapor slowly rise.  It drifts, drawn gently into the chilly darkness, until it disappears like some arctic ghost.

This morning we walked to the mill, a two story wooden cabin perched upon a corner of the river on one of the more difficult sections of the summer whitewater rafting course (see images ten and eleven on the gallery).   The wood has weathered to a dull grayness over the years and some of the people that have visited have carved their names deep into its planks.  I trace my fingers in the grooves where Liisa and Jouke and Hanna have left their marks and for a moment I stand and wonder about them and where they are now.  The cabin is still used as a boffy in the summer and I can imagine how different the place must look without its cloak of snow which softens and anonymises the surrounding features.  As I walk back to the camp I run my hands across the bark of the trees and stand for a moment, alone.  Despite the sound of the rushing water of the river behind me, it feels strangely still.

The afternoon is free time and there are several options, one is to walk the Little Bear Trial which is a 12 kilometer sub trail of the much longer 80 kilometer Karhunkierros (Bear's Ring) Trail or to go snow-shoeing across the frozen lake or cross –country skiing.  There is the option too, of just settling in to read a book.  One of the features of Basecamp is that there is no internet access or Wi-Fi so there is consequently no temptation to sit in front of a screen for the afternoon though it would have made writing up this blog much more ‘in the moment’.  With a smart-phone one is not entirely insulated from the wider world and the signal here, out in the middle of a national park and only 25 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle is better than the one I get at home.  One of my only criticisms about Basecamp is its lack of an informal social area.  There are no sofas to collapse on in front of the fire and no easy chairs to curl up in and watch the snow falling outside.  The only gathering area is the dining room which has a long row of tables either side of a central block where the food and hot drinks are served.  People meet here to chat or play board games but it lacks the kind of layout that would make socializing between meals much easier.

Lunch is ready when we get back from the mill.  It is nearly always soup and there are always two options; one which is gluten and diary free and the other for people with a common or garden digestive system like me.  The food is straight forward but consistently good and it’s been very easy to grow accustomed to and begin to enjoy the traditional dense black bread that is served alongside the more convention white sliced.   After a few hours out in the cold, coming into the warm of the dining room is like being embraced by a lover – cheeks tingle and flush as the blood rushes quickly to your head. 

The light begins to fade at 2.15 in the afternoon but it doesn’t stop a sledging competition. The sledges are erratic and difficult to control but this just adds to the laughter as one after another we attempt the down-hill course.  The snow sprays up into your face and into your mouth and down your sleeves and at the bottom it’s usual to end up in a heap beneath the sledge in a tangle of arms and legs.  Trudging back up the slope, dragging our sledges behind us we spur the others on.  As I wait in line for my turn I remember it is New Year’s Eve and that tomorrow a whole new year begins.    

We are thrown out of the restaurant as they set up for the NYE dinner because chef has prepared a special meal and they are paying more attention than usual to setting up the tables.   Instead we stand in reception and talk about what we’ve done that day and what we have planned for the next.  The bar is open and the drinks list is interesting.  Having not had alcohol for three days since my travel sickness episode I figure NYE is as good a time as any to get back off the wagon.  I opt, firstly, for a long drink so I have a Long Drink.  That’s right - this refreshing aperitif made of sparkling grape juice and gin is called somewhat unimaginatively, if precisely, Long Drink.  It was created as an official drink of the Helsinki Olympic Games of 1952 and so, in an effort at a bit of entente cordiale, I try a couple and mentally award it a gold medal.  I’ve read about Tar Schnapps, another Finnish specialty, but decide to attempt it post dinner.  I get the feeling that Tar Schnapps might be the spirit version of the three minute knock-out in boxing.

Dinner is cheery and full of chatter but we have finished by eight o’clock and midnight seems very far away.  I lean back in my chair and close my eyes which feel dry and gritty and realize I am very tired.  For a moment I feel depressed and contemplate going to bed and not worrying about making midnight and seeing the New Year in.    There is no background music and nobody has brought a dock for their iPods.  I turn on data roaming and locate a version of Auld Lang Syne on You Tube so at least we will have something to play at the crucial moment.  Ten minutes before midnight we begin to layer up in coats and hats and scarves and turn out onto the large balcony at the back of the building.  There is a group of about thirty of us in total and we stand there watching our breath in the air and stamping our feet and clapping our hands to keep warm. Across the lake in the small village beyond, some fireworks go off.  We watch them streaking up into the darkness and shattering into cascades of silver and gold, and red and blue and then hear the delayed bang as the sound travels over the lake to where we stand. The staff come out to join us and we are all then on the balcony counting down to midnight, some in Finnish, most in English, one in Swedish and as the hour strikes we cheer and then work our way around each other and hug and offer good wishes for the year ahead.  It is dark and the air is crisp and in the background fireworks continue to light up the sky in which feels like an homage to the missing Northern Lights.  As I linger on after everyone has retreated back into the warmth I lean on the balcony, gazing out into the darkness and sip my Tar Schnapps thinking about New Year’s Eve a year ago. I feel like I am looking at time through the wrong end of a telescope and everything seems so small and so far away but somehow it still seems to be having an impact.  I feel a bit like Janus looking both forward and backward at the same time.  But there is no point in dwelling and instead I focus my thoughts on the next twelve months, the submission of my doctoral thesis and my 50^th birthday.  There will be a very special holiday and hopefully a move to Cambridge.  All in all it has to be a better year than the last one.

Finland Wilderness Training, Monday Day 2, part 1

It’s not quite light when I wake and so I turn over and settle down into what I have now made into a warm and comfortable little nest in my tiny wooden-clad cabin.  After a while I poke my nose over the top of the covers and notice the light still hasn’t changed.  Something tells me that I shouldn’t just be lying there in the warmth and I need to make a move and so I reach out a hand and locate my phone and draw it close to my face so that I can make out the time.  It’s half past eight in the morning.  And kit collection is at nine.  Sending up a brief prayer that says thank-you for last night’s instruction that told us to jettison our morning personal hygiene routine I stick on as many layers as I can find close to hand, brush my teeth, wonder for a moment if that’s actually allowed, pull on my hat and gloves and head out across the short space to the reception and dining room.  The light is soft and flat and the snow compacts and creaks in a very satisfactorily fashion beneath my feet.  It’s like walking across a landscape colour-washed in Farrow and Ball’s Mizzle. 

Breakfast due to my tardiness is quick though I am surprised by how much I manage to pack away as everyone else is already gathering up their things and heading down to the kit room.   Tagging onto the end of the line I stand as I am slowly loaded up with stuff that will, I hope, keep me warm and dry over the week.  Stepping back and eyeing me critically, our instructor for the day nods sagely and handed me my base, mid and shell layers.  Extra-large he says, smiling.

Extra-large? I do not intend to take this slur lying down though by now I am so loaded up that I am beginning to think I had stumbled into a Nordic version of Crackerjack though luckily minus the cabbage.  Along with the clothes we are supplied with boots, a rucksack, a thermos flask and a friendly but stern warning to remember to return everything before we leave but  I decide I’ll return everything now.  Extra-large my foot.  I am persuaded out of it though and later on, half-way across the frozen lake with an absolutely necessary four layers between me and the elements(this goes up to seven layers on the full-day dog sledding)  I am absolutely fine with going up two dress sizes on my photos.  Luckily I have pulled my hat down so low and my scarf up so high, that nobody would recognize me anyway.    

Down on the lake which is mostly frozen at this time of year, we get used to our snow shoes and have the sort of childish fun that only comes from having been brought up and living in a country that rarely has snow but when it does grinds everything to an absolute halt and quickly turns to the kind of gray hue that Farrow and Ball don’t stock.  Walking in snow shoes on the flat is easy, child’s play I would say, and even uphill is fairly straight forward as long as you give the snow a good old boot with the prongs at the front to get some kind of purchase.  But downhill is tricky and to test our new skills we are taken to what is a very steep and wooded slope and told to find our own way down.  This, I realize, is not going to be as easy as it looks.

I consider for a moment the best approach.  It is to take the steepest route with the most trees on the basis that if I slip or fall I will have something to grab onto, or, perhaps ricochet off to break my fall?  Or should I take the slightly less steep route with less foliage with which to stop my acceleration should I lose control?   Route two mights mean I get down quicker, but probably on my head.  Raising myself out of the state of procrastination I notice that everyone is nearly halfway down already.  What the hell, I think.  And step off the edge.

Thirty minutes later we are standing on top of a snow covered cliff, overlooking a mill on the River Friction.  At this point on the river the water never freezes and it is ink-black.  A continuous flow of semi-frozen ice slowly rotates around the eddy at the bank.  I wonder what it would feel like to be in there, in the dark freezing water.  This part of the Oulanka national park was one of the locations for the 2011 film called ‘Hanna’  which as well as a very talented young female protagonist called Saoirse Ronan also starred Cate Blanchett and Tom Hollander http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993842/.  As I stand and look at the scene (see photo 8 on the Finland gallery) I feel the clean, pure air finding its way deep into my lungs.  I find a tree and leaning my back against it I slowly slip to the ground.  Closing my eyes I listen to the rushing of the water and feel I have been transported to a better, happier place.

Finland Wilderness Training, Sunday Day 1 - Part 2

Sitting in the warmth of the minibus a couple of hours later with my head resting against the glass and having fun spotting the Christmas lights in the windows of the houses we pass, I think about the week ahead.  The last time I got involved with winter training activities it resulted in a slipped disk having been dropped (on purpose) down a steep slope on Ben Nevis with only a couple of ice axes which I was supposed to use to stop my fall.   This time though, the activities agenda was intended to be a little gentler with a bit of cross country skiing, some dog sledding and an afternoon of ice-climbing planned.  It’s a long drive to Basecamp from Oulu, three and a half hours, and by the time we get there I am desperate for the loo (again) and am feeling a rising wave of travel sickness from sitting in the back of the bus.   It is very dark and very snowy and having passed the local-to-Base camp metropolis (I josh) that is Ruka I hope we are close. If there is anything worse than being desperate for the loo for the second time in a day, it is being desperate for the loo at the same time as being desperate not to vomit.  Just as I rise from my seat ready to tap the driver on the shoulder and somehow communicate to him that I need to find a nice patch of Finnish snow to sully with the remains of that morning’s sandwich I see the welcoming sign of some lights through the trees and we turn at last into camp.  My apologies at this point to the very friendly camp staff who saw only the fleeting shape of an English who ignored their warm welcome and headed for the bathroom.  That was me.

When at last I appear, slightly more composed, I find everyone in the dining room tucking into supper.  It is the start of a regular appearance on the menu by Mr. Elk and just to make sure I like it as much as I think I do, I have seconds.   The warmth of the fire in the dining room, some good food and a glass of Loganberry squash significantly help with the return of my power of speech.

There is a small team of staff at Basecamp, usually only three or four, and who are mostly young and smile a lot.  After supper and when it is clear that the nightmare of our journey is beginning to recede, we are introduced to the itinerary for the morning which involves picking up our arctic kit and equipment before the first activity which is to head out onto the frozen lake and then up to the mill.  We are given some clear directions on things that are different when you are out for any length of time in what can be quite extreme conditions.  We are told not to shower in the mornings, not to put on face cream or even to wash our face, and not to shave (if you are a man, that is) as any moisture on exposed skin can lead to frostbite patches.  I decide being dirty but frostbite-free definitely gets my vote.  After the talk and a few minutes later, in my tiny wooden-clad cabin room, I lay in bed with the quilt up to my chin with my socks still on, yet shivering.  I put a second quilt on the bed and then get up again and pile my coat on top of it and hope to God I’m not going down with something.

See the Finland photos on the gallery.

Finland Wilderness Training, Sunday - Day 1

As I am running for my connection in Stockholm Arlanda desperate for the loo, I fleetingly cast my mind back to the 4 am start and the relative cheer I had felt as I ate the last of my Christmas Day roast beef in a sandwich coasting down the M1 and looking forward to my week away.  Now, having stressed as our flight in Heathrow was delayed, and in Stockholm being corralled by some clipboard-toting-Swedish-female-Commandant who has held the flight to Oulu especially for us, I am judging how long I can restrain myself from veering off into the most available toilets (ladies, men’s toilets, at this stage I would not be fussy) when I find myself on one side of a revolving door with my fellow Exodus companions stranded on the other side.  As I stand, legs crossed ( literally) jigging about in a temperature of minus nine desperate not to embarrass myself, the Commandant spends ten minutes with her swipe card, trying to work out what the problem is.  Me, I am stand with my nose against the floor to ceiling glass panel adjacent to the non-complying revolving door staring fixedly at the sign for the toilets just beyond it.  I wonder for a moment if I have to pee, whether it will just freeze in my knickers.  Having arrived at last upon the aeroplane  - a very intimate affair of only sixty seats -  and to the clear disgruntlement of passengers already upon it I settle in, legs crossed ever more tightly, praying for takeoff.  Normally I hate this part and over the years I have created a ‘take-off mantra’ which I habitually mutter to myself as the heap of metal hurls itself down the runway gaining sufficient velocity to take off, but today, I am desperate for it to get going.  The captain took us through his flight checks, got us ready for take-off, I had my mantra at the ready and then…. all the lights went out.  I was sitting on a plane that was ready for take-off and which, all of a sudden had been plummeted (probably poor use of verb) into darkness.  I clutched my crucifix more tightly, glad we were not off the ground and marvelled at the strength of the female pelvic platform.

More on Finland, tomorrow.

See the pictures on the gallery.

Daily Telegraph - 'Just back' article

It was like someone had cut a thousand tiny holes in a gown of midnight blue and set it with diamonds that glittered and pulsed in white and blue and gold.  The night sky I am looking at deep in Northern Finland arcs across the frozen lake on which I stand and envelops me every bit as keenly as the sleeping bag pulled close around my shoulders.

It is bitterly cold.  Daylight had creaked in mid-morning and left again before the afternoon was through.  Outside lights on the few buildings at base camp stayed permanently on and the sky remained deadlocked in a soft gentle greyness typical of the mid-months of winter up at the Arctic Circle.  The snow was deep and soft and lay in drifts like mounds of icy sugar into which our boots and then our legs sank and disappeared.  We worked hard to build the snow shelter in which we planned to sleep that night.  It was a week’s wilderness skills training over New Year, the eve of which we toasted with Tar Schnapps as we stood looking beyond the bank of pine-trees in which the camp is nestled and up into the night sky, searching for a glimpse of the Northern Lights. 

Now, though, I am standing alone outside the shelter having struggled to sleep.  It was not the cold:  inside the shelter it keeps a steady minus four or minus five degrees and it was not the comfort: but Midnight came and went and the minutes ground around to one a.m. and onto two a.m. and at three o’clock I knew that sleep that night if I stayed, wound into a ball there in the snowy womb, would pass me by. And so I slid down the tunnel quietly and gently so as not to wake my companions, intent on making at some haste my way back across the lake and up through the trees to my cabin.  It wasn’t the cold that froze me as I emerged but rather the stillness and the silence as I raised my face to a monochrome world hung with stars upon stars upon stars.  Stood Orion with his overbearing astral presence as he pulled back his bow and lifted his shield; the Seven Sisters were joined by half a dozen more and the Milky Way had become a strip of speckled beauty pinned onto the velvet darkness clear from one horizon to the next.

I felt the cold assaulting my face and begin the long creep up through my boots and into my bones and I knew I would have to move soon. I began to walk slowly back across the ice and through the snow, feeling it creak and give as it compacted beneath my feet.  Before I disappeared into the trees I turned and took one final look and caught the fleeting trail of a shooting star.