Finding Petronella
A young woman, a 90-year-old Lappish legend, and the journey of a lifetime.
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“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. Yet, Highway E75 was what I had. On my map of Finland it was a red line, pointing straight north. My head ached from the smell of exhaust and the roar of semi trucks. Curious faces peered at me from the… Read More
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 had heavy long underwear, a down vest, and my thickest fleece. I live in Maine now, I thought when I packed my bag last week to return above the Arctic Circle. This will be enough. “No.” Leena lit a cigarette and raised… Read More
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 drop down toward freezing come September. What, you may be asking, could possibly motivate me to sit naked with a local newspaper in my hands in a floating armchair in the middle of a freezing pond? There is only one thing. She is a… Read More
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 gray dog extracts himself from underneath a broken door, lifts his leg to pee, and walks out of the frame. The world is silent. At the highest point of the mass, the ground begins to vibrate. The rubble glows a golden… Read More
Saturday October 11, 2014 It is somewhere way deep down in the morning before the light, and I am awake. I am awake because I can’t figure out how to say goodbye. I came to Finland with the hope of being more than a tourist. I wanted to slow down and settle in, to stay long enough to allow the people and the place to sink into my skin. I have written about the major triumphs and pitfalls… Read More
“You are still here!” Tinnti the boat driver looked at me in mild surprise as I walked up to where he and a bunch of other men were seated on the bench at Kultahamina. “Of course.” “Where you been?” “Pihlajamäki.” “When you come back?” “Maybe next weekend to go fishing with Aki and Ami, and then in a few weeks I’ll go down south to hike Petronella’s longer route here over Morgam-Vibus. After… Read More
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…do not seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” -Ranier Maria Rilke If you wanted to take the direct route… Read More
“I’ve let both you and my mom down, and I’m sorry.” I blinked back tears as I read the email again, and disbelief washed over me. It was from Solange. On my first day in Finland, I met with a reporter from the largest paper in Finland, the Helsingen Sanomat. He was charming, seemed earnest, and worked hard to gain my trust with copies of articles from the National Archives. At the… Read More
I was curious to know what would come out of my pen when I wrote my last “Hello Dear Friend, I love today” letter in Oulu. It was simple, it was everything that felt true, it was this: Hello Dear Friend, I love today. I love today because it is both an ending and a beginning. It has been a little over a month since I arrived in Finland, and what a… Read More
It all started with this photograph of graffiti on a wall in Ireland: I didn’t even take the photo, my college roommate Steph did. I haven’t even been to Ireland. Steph brought that photo home and framed it on the wall, and it became a part of my subconscious, scrolling through my brain like movie credits on repeat. I scribbled it in textbook margins, I wrote it on napkins in the dining… Read More
Finding Petronella 