By ski, with the waterways frozen, no part of the landscape was closed off to us. Four of us headed out late one morning, and for hours we took turns following each around the bends and coves of the lake, sometimes forging new tracks when the trail ended. We passed abandoned summer cottages and boats left exposed to collect the winter snow. We skied through brown reeds and around rocks poking through the frost. The edge of the lake was rimmed with tall pine and birch trees, their barks stripped for several feet from the ground. The tops slumped with the weight of an overnight snowstorm. We ducked in and out of the coves, an army of swish, poke, swish, poke, swish, poke.
Santa's Village
Although Finland is geographically one of the largest countries in Europe, its population of fewer than 6 million is spread out across diverse terrain. The northern part of the country, known as Lapland, is the most sparsely populated, a barren wilderness of reindeer and the Sami people who herd them. The gateway to Lapland is the city of Rovaniemi, a college town and tourist center that swells with visitors in summer and winter. You can find cold here when home is warm and you want inspiration from pink cheeks and ice for just a little bit longer.
We took a 7 1/2-hour train ride to Rovaniemi just to see the Arctic Circle, which is marked with a globe and a sign at a tourist trap called Santa's Village just outside of town. We got to Rovaniemi after dark, and the cold blasted us the moment we stepped off the train. This was a different chill. This was an Arctic chill that got into your bones and stayed there. We had a frigid walk up the hill to our hotel, the Lapinportti.
We dumped our backpacks and headed a few blocks to the town center, a pedestrian mall lined with shops. After American-Finnish food at a homey, dark restaurant attached to the City Hotel, we found our way to the Taso Cafe & Bar, a trendy dance spot filled with college students in the colored snowsuits of their individual schools.
We danced and grooved to imported songs, ourselves imported and free. We stayed through the last number and then skipped back to our hotel in the cold.
There is something resolved about Finland, and about being in Finland that resolves you, too. In her book "The Face of War," Martha Gellhorn, a correspondent for Collier's Weekly, writes about Finland during the great Winter War of 1939. She describes a boy of 9 standing outside his home in Helsinki and watching the Russian bombers. "He was blond and plump and he stood with his hands on his hips and with his feet apart and looked at the sky with a stubborn, serious face," she wrote. "He held himself stiffly so as not to shrink from the noise. When the air was quiet again he said, 'Little by little, I am getting really angry.' "
When Suzy and I got the Peugeot stuck in a snowdrift at a gas station -- actually, she got it stuck, but no need to be petty -- a young attendant who worked the car wash came over to help. He was soon joined by a garbage truck driver, a bread delivery man, a bus driver with a shovel and two clerks from the gas station who came out with coffee and cigarettes to watch our spectacle. We kicked at the snow, while the men walked around the car, carefully studying it, pointing, thrusting a shovel under the carriage once in awhile, stopping for a break, looking some more and then finally, in broken English, telling us we needed a tow.
The gas station happened to be across the street from a three-story retirement building where the old Finnish folks, like old folks everywhere with nothing to do but watch the world inch by, came out on their balconies to observe the scene. An elderly man yelled at us in his language from a window, got dressed and came down 40 minutes later while we were still digging out to yell at us some more. Eventually, the garbage truck driver hooked us up and pulled us out, while the clerks clapped and cheered and the old man continued his rant. I shook hands with the garbage man, climbed back into the car and off we went, resolved, a $15 tow rope our first souvenir from Finland.
Lost in Finland
The day before, Suzy and I had broken off from the group to find a downhill ski resort in the town of Jyvaskyla, about 2 1/2 hours east of our Kihnio base. We were sleep-deprived and running on adrenaline when we got to the Laajavuori ski center, which has six modestly sloped ski runs, 40 miles of cross-country ski trails and several frightening ski jumps.
We rented downhill skis and bought a three-hour pass for about $30 each and hit the slopes, eager for a little speed after nearly a week poking along on cross-country skis. Never mind the ski jump. The T-bar lift -- the only way up -- turned out to be our biggest challenge. On the first run up the mountain, I fell shortly after getting on, and my pole and glove hung on for a yard or two before dropping off as well. The next run up together, our skis got tangled and we hit the snow with a splat. The swinging T-bar, in turn, hit Suzy in the head. We fell another three times on one particular tow, the final time when we were two-thirds up the mountain, which meant we had to walk the rest of the way. There is no country in which you want to be walking your ridiculous-looking, 33-year-old self up a mountain while snickering, youthful snowboarders pass you on the T-bar they have ridden their whole lives without falling off. But at the top, we were rewarded by the lakes and town sprawling before us in varying hues of gray and white and more gray.
