We decided that it wouldn't be safe to turn around and drive back into the blizzard. So we drove on a few miles to Kuopio, a city of 87,000 with the world's largest smoke sauna.
We bought a phone card but couldn't figure out how to get it to work and couldn't find anyone who spoke English to help. So we made our way to the Hotel Jahtihovi, where the clerk allowed us into a back office to get on the Internet. We reasoned that if our friends really got into a panic, they'd probably call home for advice. We e-mailed everyone we knew who might get a phone call.
"Help, urgent," the subject line read. "Suzy and I went to a ski resort two hours from our resort today with plans to return to the girls tonight. We got stranded in a blizzard, got turned around and went 2 hours out of our way and are stuck. We cannot reach them and just in case you hear that we are lost and they cannot find us we are at the Hotelli Jahtihovi in Kuopio. . . . We are fine, just stuck but know the girls must be worried sick about us. Other than that, we are having a blast!"
Our friend Mai e-mailed back almost immediately. "You are two of the smartest people I know. Maybe not together."
Although we didn't know it at the time, our message got through. An hour later, Jamie called home and learned that we were safe.
Tex-Mex in Kuopio
We eventually made a pact to stop worrying about our worrying friends, who were not worrying and instead making plans to go to Helsinki the next day without us. We found a Tex-Mex restaurant on a side alley that was still serving food, ordered a beer and relived our adventure until the lights flickered and we looked up to discover that we were sitting in an empty restaurant. We had managed to close down another bar.
Here is the thing about Finland. It is so easy to lose yourself here. To be numb with cold and to feel more alive than you ever have. In a quiet field of snow, in an unexpected blizzard, life gets suspended like the sunset. You wrap yourself in the frosty blue light and you stare out into the unknown with time to think whatever random thoughts enter your head. You have no plan, and you no longer feel as if you need one, not in Finland. In the solitude of the morning, isolated on a frozen lake or dancing in a noisy bar in an Arctic outpost, you are free to discover a simple, unadulterated happiness. The best vacations are the ones that don't feel like a vacation from life, Suzy concluded. They feel like life itself. This is where Finland had led us.
The next morning we turned around and drove in the right direction.
Jackie Spinner, a reporter on The Post's Financial staff, is currently on assignment in Baghdad.
