Finding Petronella
A young woman, a 90-year-old Lappish legend, and the journey of a lifetime.
It has taken five years, but we have arrived: to the place where my skill as a writer meets the story. To the place where the book gets more space than...
“It was not a bad highway, as highways go—long and flat and lined with evergreens and small houses—but it was a far cry from the serenely wooded trails of my imagination....
“These are people who live close to God, their god, the river. They bathe in her, scoop her up in containers to make coffee, drink her down. They skin ptarmigan and...
3/14/18 I’m standing in the meadow, soles of my feet slowly freezing, wishing the body did not have limits. My eyes will never be wide enough to catch this sky, the...
The Sami woman named Leena looked me up and down. I was wearing the warmest clothes I own—a ski jacket, snow pants, my best gloves and boots. Underneath all that I...
In the the middle of a pond on my friend Ami’s gold claim in Lemmenjoki National Park, there is a floating armchair. The water, which may be warm during the summer, begins to...
In my dream, I am a phoenix. I am standing in the wake of a tornado: shattered concrete, ashes, splintered beams, debris from buildings I have known, lived in, even. A wiry...
For those of you Finnish speakers, your moment has come. Here is a stirring, eloquent account of our epic 115-km journey to Lemmenjoki, written by none other than my partner in...
Do you feel like you need a little help from the Lemmenjoki Youth Club to get into the holiday spirit? Me too. (They might kill me for this. Worth it.) Starring:...
The Berkeley coffee barista squinted at the Lemmenjoki gold nugget around my neck. “I just can’t figure out your necklace,” she said, “what is it?” I fingered the peculiarly shaped piece...
Finding Petronella 