Monday, November 14, 2011

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree

I commuted today by bicycle, and while returning to work I remembered the time in my teens when I was keen on cross-country skiing. I was living up north then, and we had real winters (or so it seems now), and my typical daily skiing was 15 km or more. It was then the same as it is now with the bicycle - it takes 10-15 minutes until it starts to feel good, and then it is really nice going.

What was different them - besides real winters - was light, or lack of it. The ski tracks weren't machine-made, they were curved, bumpy and uneven, and there was no artificial light. Sometimes it was almost pitch-black.

You had to rely on other senses than sight to keep on the track. But then you learned the track so well that you didn't much need eyes at all...

Today, after sunset, we went for a walk with the children, investigating birch trees, among other things.

4 comments:

Paul Butzi said...

And climb black branches up a snow white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Juha Haataja said...

Yes!

(It is a contemplative poem...)

Unknown said...

And I am contemplating :-)

Also, love "Up" and "Down!"

Juha Haataja said...

@Tinman: Thanks!

@All: Reading the Frost poem was quite a thing - at first I read the surface meaning, later I got a sense of what he was saying of life.

This is a rare case of a poem which I can understand even though I'm non-native in English. Usually I have difficulties when trying to read poetry in some other language than Finnish.