“Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. …How can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these- the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?”
– Mary Oliver, Mindful
Happy New Year, everyone.
It is one of my favorite times of the year, certainly. A crisp, clean beginning. Like fresh snow blanketing the expanse, covering my past mistakes, begging my eyes to gaze upon its pristine sparkle and set within it new tracks, new adventures. After many months away from this medium, it feels right to come back on this date, refreshed after a necessary hibernation, a bit stronger and hopefully a bit wiser. Certainly more clear-headed. My little area of the world has now been graced with radiant sunshine two days in a row, with more to come if luck is on our side. Grace is the perfect word for such a rarity, and I am grateful.
Winter is a slower time in Norway. December’s Solstice, the date marking the longest day of darkness on the Western calendar, has come and gone, and slowly Oslo will be gaining more and more light. On its darkest days, Oslo has under six hours of daylight. The sun rises around 9:30am and sets a little after 3, and between those hours, the city generally displays to its inhabitants a sky of dreary, overcast white. No sun, no visible clouds- for the sky IS clouds. A vast expanse of white. I cannot count how many times I have opened our white bedroom shades for the sky to only perfectly blend into them.
But on beautiful occasions like today and yesterday, the sun does make its glorious appearance, and these moments are truly special. So special, in fact, that residents here will stop everything they are doing, turn towards the warmth, close their eyes, and let the rays of sun wash over their bare faces. I quickly learned to do the same myself, a blissful smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. Despite Norway’s Christian roots, the winter sun is worshiped like a deity.
While those living further north in Norway experience a life far more extreme than anything I have here in Oslo, with the sun disappearing completely for months on end, there is an art to mentally and emotionally surviving here. This is now my second full winter in Norway, and I’m getting smarter, learning by trial and error the do’s and don’ts of how to thrive. Double doses of Vitamin D pills are a necessity. My purchase of a light therapy lamp proved fairly useless, but a few trips a month to a tanning bed suffice, in which I pretend for 12 glorious minutes that I’m far away on a tropical island, feeling the warm breeze and heat caress my skin. Blessedly too, we already have some snow, a welcome relief from the cold rain that so often frequents the winter months. A Midwesterner at heart, snow is a golden key to my winter happiness.
This winter, my partner and I have attempted to beat the system. While so many Norwegians went on holiday in July and August, leaving in their wake a calmer, quieter city, we saved ours for winter, escaping to hot sunny days lying on a sandy beach, applying just enough sunscreen to prevent a burn but turn our skin to a rosy bronze. We soaked up the sun like we were hibernating animals collecting stores for winter, and really, we were. I’m continuously reminded of the beautiful story of Frederick the field mouse, by Leo Lionni**. While the rest of his family works tirelessly to collect nuts, wheat, and straw, Frederick spends his hours collecting sunshine and colors. Despite their criticisms, it’s Frederick and his imaginative reserves who ultimately get his family through the long, cold winter.
And I have a new love now. A new strategy to combat the bleak thoughts and fogginess I feel so often mirrored from the sky above. About five days a week, or as often as I am able, I take myself to floating saunas on the sea. To say these saunas have been a gift is an understatement. On many hard days, sauna is what has gotten me through, helped me to cope and process. We all need our shining rays of light. For me, sauna is a beacon.
So each morning under a blackened sky, I carefully navigate through icy roads and overcrowded buses, strip down to my underwear, and treat myself to the intoxication of heat from a wood burning stove, plumes of steam scented with sandalwood, eucalyptus, rosemary, or sage. As the waves of warmth wash over me, I let them burn away any lingering feelings of frustration, loneliness, exhaustion, overwhelm. I feel my hair stand up on end, drops of sweat beading, relishing the vacillating sensations of cold and heat, all the prickles and the tingles. And when my body says enough, I take myself outside to the freezing air, feeling the chunks of snow and ice beneath my feet. I watch the steam rise from my skin. Then I slowly climb the ladder down into the sea, noting to calm my breathing as the icy water envelops first my legs, then my torso, and then I am under. I float on my back in the shocking cold, and time slows. One second stretches to ten, two into thirty, as I note the seabirds with whom I have joined merrily swimming, the biting feel of the saltwater along my hairline, the icy blue toenail polish mirroring the water as my feet float up in front of me. And then inevitably, within several more seconds, this bliss turns to icy pain, and I know it’s time to make a quick exit and find refuge on the dock once again.
I breathe the cold, crisp air deep into my lungs. I take hold of my senses, note the boats along the harbor horizon. I watch the subtle shift of pinks and purples and indigos as the sun prepares to rise. I am the living embodiment of joy and wonder.
I enter the sauna, heat up, repeat.
This morning was my third day fully swimming in Oslo’s cold harbor, after a week of recovering from post-travel illness. The water has been around 3.6*C (38* F), though this morning it lingered at around 1*C (33*F) with paper thin shards of ice coating its surface, grazing my body, clinging to my hair. Although my dips have not been long, I must say I’m quite proud of myself. Proud of the fortitude to enter the water repeatedly, proud of the self-control over my breathing, proud of my sitting on the dock in the frigid air practicing Breath of Fire and feeling warmth despite. Proud of my showing up to do this at all in the first place. In the end, it’s always the small accomplishments that leave me feeling the happiest.
As I enjoy the heat of that blessed sauna, I practice gratitude, for the ability and opportunity to be doing what I’m doing, for the community there that I am beginning to become a part of, for the swans and the ducks and the auks and the seagulls, for the ice and the heat, for my breath. For my wonderful, ever thoughtful, and endlessly patient partner, for my family and my amazing friends who are so far away but so close in my heart. For my home, my books, my plants, my body. For coffee, cooking, walking, dancing, yoga. For sunshine. For this life I have been so graciously given, in all its beauty and heartache and ceaseless wonderment.
**Lionni, L. (1967). Frederick. New York: Pantheon.
A Mermaid Out of Water 