Monday, November 26, 2007 at 2:02am
Treasures of the snow
Column: Interesting Times
The first snow of the season arrived Thanksgiving evening. Just a few inches fell, but enough white to make a festive covering of the trees, ground and adobe walls of Santa Fe and to usher in the holiday season here in the mountains. While it is new this season for me, there is only one snowfall, and each flake of this past week immerses me not in today but in the memory of that early December on the road from Sweden to the farm in Norway some months after my son died.
What I thought then was that I would simply drive a Volvo up through Sweden, across over into Norway and to Grimsbu, the birthplace of my great-grandfather, where my family still lives.
What I know now — and learned the hard way—is that all trips are a mental, spiritual process with each detail a part of past or present thought. To put it more simply, Love prepares the way.
I had an invitation to stop overnight at friends who own Rottneros Park, and I remember thinking, that early December night in one of the guest bedrooms, that this is how a princess slept — perfectly ironed sheets, high ceilings, canopy bed and French doors out to the acres and acres of manicured grounds. The manor house is the setting for Selma Lagerlöf's book "The Story of Gösta Berling." The Swedish novelist Lagerlöf, who in 1909 became the first woman writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, is legend in the Nordic countries.
In her short stories Lagerlöf often blurred the border between dreams and reality. In "Old Agneta" a woman lives alone in a cottage on the edge of a broad glacier. In the solitude of the mountains, she starts to talk to herself. She feels that she is already frozen with the cold and her empty life, and wants to die because nobody needs her. A monk comes to her and shows that she is not alone — the mist and fog of the snow-covered mountain are in reality a host of lost souls. Agneta burns candles in her cottage for the ghosts, who are attracted by their light and warmth. "Where would the souls of the departed find a refuge from the boundless cold of Death, if the old ones here on earth did not throw open their hearts to them?" My hosts had thrown open their hearts to me.
I left this heaven in the morning after coffee and headed through the forest across the Norwegian border with no guards, nothing and no one to note where I was, what my nationality might be, no impediment to singular freedom. It was a bright day. Some hours later the snow began to fall, and within 20 minutes I could not see the road ahead. There was a gas station to the right on the road, the only building visible, and I pulled in and made a call to my cousin. "It's snowing so hard, I cannot see the road," I said. "You had better come on," she replied. "We are expecting you."
A few miles up the road I saw a sign: Folldal and took a left. Now it was dark, and I could not see beyond the headlights of the car. Snow attacked the windshield, and I was driving so slowly that the speedometer showed less than five miles an hour. After an hour or so I opened the car door on the driver's side to see if I could follow the road that way and saw that there was no road there, only a cliff. I started to laugh. There was nothing to do but to keep on and I thought of the Voice that spoke to Job saying: Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? (Job 38:22). I saw to my right lights of a house glowing in the snow-filled dark and kept on, when I saw before me a huge red glow of lights and I knew that I was on the forest service road, not a highway, and heading to the far side of Folldal toward the lights of the ski jump. I had been on the wrong road, the hard road, but still would reach my destination.
A warm brandy waited for me at the house, some cakes, and the news that Martin was waiting for me at his mother's up the road. Slipping and sliding in the Volvo, I made it another few miles through what were now several feet of snow to the farmhouse on the hill. We talked for a while, and it was then that Martin said, "You should stay here, marry me."
There is more and less to this story — for another time. But it is not hard to see that there is only one snowfall that matters to me.
— — —
Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books on religion and was adjunct professor at the Boston Theological Institute under a Templeton Science and Religion Grant. She is currently the spiritual expert for the physical and spiritual health website of Dr. Andrew Weil. Her book "The Feminine Spirit: Recapturing the Heart of Scripture" was just published. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Lynne Bundesen.
What I thought then was that I would simply drive a Volvo up through Sweden, across over into Norway and to Grimsbu, the birthplace of my great-grandfather, where my family still lives.
What I know now — and learned the hard way—is that all trips are a mental, spiritual process with each detail a part of past or present thought. To put it more simply, Love prepares the way.
I had an invitation to stop overnight at friends who own Rottneros Park, and I remember thinking, that early December night in one of the guest bedrooms, that this is how a princess slept — perfectly ironed sheets, high ceilings, canopy bed and French doors out to the acres and acres of manicured grounds. The manor house is the setting for Selma Lagerlöf's book "The Story of Gösta Berling." The Swedish novelist Lagerlöf, who in 1909 became the first woman writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, is legend in the Nordic countries.
In her short stories Lagerlöf often blurred the border between dreams and reality. In "Old Agneta" a woman lives alone in a cottage on the edge of a broad glacier. In the solitude of the mountains, she starts to talk to herself. She feels that she is already frozen with the cold and her empty life, and wants to die because nobody needs her. A monk comes to her and shows that she is not alone — the mist and fog of the snow-covered mountain are in reality a host of lost souls. Agneta burns candles in her cottage for the ghosts, who are attracted by their light and warmth. "Where would the souls of the departed find a refuge from the boundless cold of Death, if the old ones here on earth did not throw open their hearts to them?" My hosts had thrown open their hearts to me.
I left this heaven in the morning after coffee and headed through the forest across the Norwegian border with no guards, nothing and no one to note where I was, what my nationality might be, no impediment to singular freedom. It was a bright day. Some hours later the snow began to fall, and within 20 minutes I could not see the road ahead. There was a gas station to the right on the road, the only building visible, and I pulled in and made a call to my cousin. "It's snowing so hard, I cannot see the road," I said. "You had better come on," she replied. "We are expecting you."
A few miles up the road I saw a sign: Folldal and took a left. Now it was dark, and I could not see beyond the headlights of the car. Snow attacked the windshield, and I was driving so slowly that the speedometer showed less than five miles an hour. After an hour or so I opened the car door on the driver's side to see if I could follow the road that way and saw that there was no road there, only a cliff. I started to laugh. There was nothing to do but to keep on and I thought of the Voice that spoke to Job saying: Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? (Job 38:22). I saw to my right lights of a house glowing in the snow-filled dark and kept on, when I saw before me a huge red glow of lights and I knew that I was on the forest service road, not a highway, and heading to the far side of Folldal toward the lights of the ski jump. I had been on the wrong road, the hard road, but still would reach my destination.
A warm brandy waited for me at the house, some cakes, and the news that Martin was waiting for me at his mother's up the road. Slipping and sliding in the Volvo, I made it another few miles through what were now several feet of snow to the farmhouse on the hill. We talked for a while, and it was then that Martin said, "You should stay here, marry me."
There is more and less to this story — for another time. But it is not hard to see that there is only one snowfall that matters to me.
— — —
Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books on religion and was adjunct professor at the Boston Theological Institute under a Templeton Science and Religion Grant. She is currently the spiritual expert for the physical and spiritual health website of Dr. Andrew Weil. Her book "The Feminine Spirit: Recapturing the Heart of Scripture" was just published. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Lynne Bundesen.