Springtime in the north

I know that the flowers are beneath the snow, somewhere. I know because I remember them. I remember the angelicas, the cloudberries, the heather. I remember the bog and the lichen and the leaves on the birches. I wonder what it is like to lay there under the snow for all those months, not knowing if the spring is actually returning this time. Only hoping that it will. Is it like staying inside a boat all winter, wondering if the sun will ever come back? I always assume that it will return. The sun, the spring, the grass in the fields. But I don't know for sure that it will. I can only hope, because so far it has returned every year to my knowledge. I spent the winter in a small fishing village, not far from the northernmost point of mainland Europe. I saw the last sunset in November, and then it was night, and then it was winter. For two months. It's easy to make friends in a town of this size. It has 800 inhabitants, and is considered the center of its municipality. I became good friends with the other people in the dock, all fishermen, arriving from nearby villages to fish here during the coldest months. Some of them are local, some live in houses, and some are like me and they live on their boats. In the darkness we had the company of each other, and while they were working hard out on the fish fields each day, I spent my time inside, reading, writing, what else is there to do in the dark. But one day, light appeared at the mountaintops, for only a few minutes, and another day I heard water, free, flowing, fresh water. I saw life. I saw movement. No longer was the landscape frozen shut, but it was living and breathing, and every day that light on the mountaintops descended further down, towards the ocean, until suddenly the sun returned to my dock, to my boat, and the mooring lines, which had been frozen, were now free to let me loose, and just like that, it was time for me to leave. When people ask me questions, they ask if I am lonely, but I find that loneliness and solitude are not similar. Loneliness is accompanied by others. It grows in crowds. Loneliness is being excluded, being misunderstood, being shunned. To be lonely is to not belong. But I do belong. I belong among the fulmars, the mountains and the waves. I belong here, in the company of the wind, the snow and the seabirds. And since I belong, I cannot be lonely. I don't have a destination in mind this week, but the days are bright and the weather is fine. I know of some nearby anchor spots where I can spend the next days. I look towards nature, and I see no loneliness. Could the seagull ever be lonely? Could the birch ever be lonely? But then, I suppose, loneliness cannot grow where self-awareness does not exist. How can one feel alone if one cannot feel a sense of self? I won't pretend to know the thoughts and feelings of trees, but I do not think that the birch feels a need for self-realization. I think that the birch lives its own life, doing exactly what it was intended to do. For how can a birch do better than what it already does? The birch lives, and the birch grows. And there is no one who thinks that the birch should perform better, or work harder. We accept the birch to be exactly what it is. And we think that it is particularly beautiful now, in the spring, when it blooms its small leaves once again.