Amigos,
On Friday, my long-awaited book, NOTES FOR THE AURORA SOCIETY, was finally published.
Many of you have read excerpts from it over the past few years. Those are located here and here and here.
The book can be purchased here.
In 2003, I walked 1500 miles across Finland interviewing Finns about thier relationship to nature and researching different spiritual, economic and historical aspects of that relationship. Why Finland? Well, for one, my wife is from Finland and we lived there for several years. Another reason is that many Finns see themselves has having a unique relationship with thier landscape and natural surroundings. It was a cultural self-perception that I wanted to explore further.
NOTES FOR THE AURORA SOCIETY is a work of travel literature infused with my research. My journey took me from the southernmost point of Finland to the Arctic Ocean. It lasted five months. Yes, five months to walk across Finland and five damn years to write the book.
Its a great relief to see it published.
I think NOTES is a fun, if heady, read. I hope a number of you find time to read it and give me feedback. I'd love to hear your input...especially from the several Finns I know are on Daily Kos!! Be it positive, negative or neutral, please find time to send me an email or post something below.
Again, the book can be purchased here. Thank you for your support and ENJOY!!
Wilderness and falling down, theoretically, have nothing to do with each other. In my case, however, they are intimately intertwined.
I slipped and fell straight out of the door of the Kalamakaltion wilderness hut north of Nunnanen, Finnish Lapland. It was late August, 2003. I had over 1500 miles of walking behind me and over one hundred left to go before the Arcitic Ocean. When I fell, I hit my head on a rock and felt dizzy. I fell again five minutes later and cut open my hand on another rock. The wet had turned the ATV trail to glistening mud, slick as ice. The rain fell in a steady drizzle.
I passed through stands of dwarf birch, partly colored for autumn. The land was swampy and moist, cut by intermittent ridges of glacial till. There were thousands of streams and ponds that interspersed velvety turf and dark Arcadian copses. The ground was covered in alpine clubmoss, mountain bearberry, downy willow, common butterwort, several saxifrage species. I passed a number of small lakes and the ATV trail ploughed through swamps and streams, as if nothing could get in its way. It stretched all the way through the Puljun Wilderness Area and into the western wilderness of the one thousand one hundred square mile Lemmonjoki National Park five miles to the north. It was used by the reindeer herders, whose camp was beyond the Peltotunturi.
I slipped and fell several more times, once face first into a shallow brook.
The Peltotunturi was a long, low table situated above the tree line. It ran northwest-southeast extending into Norway, only five miles distant. The wind was fierce there and on top I got caught in a squall of rain and snow. The visibility dropped to just a few feet. The rain actually hurt when it hit my face. I saw a mountain plover and was sure it was shivering. Fearing I might lose the trail, I pulled out my maps and compass to take a bearing on the Wilderness hut where I hoped to spend the night. That was dumb. The wind tore my 1:50 000 topo map from my hand, launching it into Norway. It also took my general 1:100 000 area map, but that, I recovered, torn, wet and shredded, from a reindeer fence a half mile across the rocks. I stuffed it in my pocket and made for the tree line below and to the north. I was soaking wet when I arrived at the reindeer camp....