There''s No Such Thing as Bad Weather 1 A RIGHT TO NATURE The wild is a voice that never stops whispering. --DANIEL CROCKETT When I went to Perth, Australia, as an exchange student in college, I really didn''t expect to come back with much more than a great tan and a backpack full of good memories. Instead, I returned with a boyfriend from rural Indiana. On one of our first dates, he told me that as a child he used to build dams with debris in the creek in his backyard. In a different creek in Sweden, I used to clear the debris from the stream so that the water could flow freely. We were immediately drawn to each other. As it turns out, the unlikely union between a Swedish environmentalist and a Midwestern industrialist had more staying power than our families would ever have imagined, and after we graduated we decided to move to Montana, where my husband had spent many of his school holidays skiing with his family. Fresh out of journalism school, I got my first job working for a start-up internet business that might as well have served as the inspiration for the movie Office Space, complete with soulless cubicles, mysterious forms, and disgruntled white-collar employees, who were all kept in check by an overzealous supervisor.
Still, the move was a smooth transition for me. The mountains reminded me of home, the wildlife was spectacular, and the intensity and length of the winters rivaled those of my homeland. Bozeman, where we lived, was in the middle of a transition from sleepy ranching community with world-class fly-fishing waters to hipster college town and up-and-coming vacation spot for people from all over the US. This change was not well received by everybody, but with my Scandinavian lineage and experience with harsh weather I fit the mold of a "true" Montanan and was readily accepted by the locals. In contrast, anybody who was the slightest bit hesitant to driving in heavy snow or complained about the cold was jokingly dismissed as a "Californian," whether they were actually from the Golden State or not. Ironically, most of the people who complained about out-of-staters were themselves from somewhere else. Being a Montanan, it turned out, was not so much about the stamp on your birth certificate but more of a state of mind. Success was not measured by how many steps you had climbed on the corporate ladder but rather by how many days you had spent in a tent instead of a cubicle.
Wealth was not necessarily measured by the size of your bank account but by how much elk meat you had in your freezer. Skills were assessed not according to what you had learned from a textbook but by how you handled real-life challenges like how to avoid getting buried by an avalanche or attacked by a grizzly bear. I was clearly not in Sweden anymore. Most of the people I now hung out with put me to shame with their in-depth knowledge of nature and advanced wilderness survival skills. One thing was for sure: If I ever stood face-to-face with the Apocalypse I would grab onto a seasoned Montanan in a heartbeat and not let go. But I noticed that, parallel with this hard-core outdoor culture, there were forces at work in American society that seemed to create a divide between humans and nature. One of the first lessons I learned in my new homeland was that pretty much all the things I was used to doing either on foot or by using public transportation in Scandinavia could be done without ever exiting your car in Montana. Here, you could go straight from your comfortably heated or air-conditioned house in the morning to your equally comfortable climate-controlled car and drive to work.
Actually, this was the only way to get to work unless you lived within walking or biking distance, since public transportation was nonexistent. At lunch, you could go to one of a slew of fast-food restaurants with a drive-through window, idle in line for ten minutes, and then inhale your lunch while running errands in your vehicle. Returning a movie at the video store? There was a drive-by box for that. Mailing a letter? No need to get out of the car. Buying a six-pack? Give your order to the guy at the drive-up window. Even bank errands could be done from the driver''s seat. At school, parents waited in their vehicles in a long, winding line until a teacher with a walkie-talkie called on their child to come outside. I had never seen anything like it.
Many roads lacked sidewalks, and just walking across the parking lot at the mall sometimes seemed borderline suicidal. Then again, assuming that I made it, all the stores I could ever need were conveniently located under one roof. I noticed that some people even went to the mall to exercise, walking or jogging down the long corridors. This phenomenon was so well established that they had a name: mall walkers. I was intrigued. I could understand why some older people would want to avoid slippery sidewalks or bumpy trails in the woods, but I saw people of all ages participate in this activity. What were they doing in here when the awe-inspiring Rocky Mountains--and all that they had to offer in terms of outdoor recreation--were just a stone''s throw away? I obviously still had some cultural codes to crack. Since so many people just seemed to be moving from one climate-controlled indoor environment to another, there was no need to dress for the elements, and I found that people often dressed as if they didn''t expect to go outside at all, not even putting on a coat in the dead of winter.
In one of my columns for a Swedish newspaper, I wrote that, due to the way American society was designed, most people could probably get by with walking less than a thousand feet per day. Now I was starting to think that this was an overly generous estimate. Back then, I didn''t reflect much on what all this might mean if we were to have children. We were too busy enjoying our carefree lives. The biggest decisions we had to make at the time were where to go camping and which peak to hike come the weekend, and we were pretty contented with that. But as I neared my thirties and the idea of having children beckoned, we decided that it was time to move back to my husband''s hometown in Indiana to be closer to family. I was yet again about to embark on a cultural journey. There Is No Such Thing as Bad Weather In Scandinavia, where I was born and raised, it would be very easy to make excuses for not going outside.
The northern part of Scandinavia--which truly comprises Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, but for all practical purposes of this book also will include our eastern neighbor, Finland, which shares much of the same culture--reaches well beyond the Arctic Circle, and the climate in the region is partly subarctic. Heavy snowfall is common in the winter, especially up north, although white Christmases are not guaranteed. The Gulf Stream helps moderate the temperature, especially along the western coasts, making it warmer than is typical of other places on the same latitude. Still, anybody who has spent a winter in Scandinavia knows that it is not for the faint of heart. Temperatures can range from Let''s Bring out the Patio Furniture to I Think My Eyelids Just Froze Shut, but one facet of Scandinavian winters always remains constant: the darkness. Each year for twenty-seven days, peaking with the winter solstice in late December, the polar nights blanket northern Scandinavia. During that time, the sun doesn''t rise over the horizon at all, and life enters the twilight zone. Literally.
The south is less unforgiving, offering up to seven hours of precious daylight per day in January. Even then, overcast skies often submerge Scandinavia in a perpetual semi-dusk-like state that has a way of putting people''s resilience to the ultimate test. How bad is it? Consider that in 2014 the Swedish capital of Stockholm logged just three hours of sunshine for the whole month of November, a new record. "People on the streets are ready to start eating each other," a friend exasperatedly reported toward the end of the month. "The zombie apocalypse is here." Every Scandinavian has his or her own way of dealing with the dark winters. The Finnish stay awake by drinking more coffee than people anywhere else in the world. The Swedes build elaborate sunrooms and go on vacations to Thailand.
The Danish have hygge, one of those unique phenomena that doesn''t translate well but evokes images of a family cozying up in front of a fireplace, drinking hot chocolate, and playing board games. The Norwegians eat cod-liver oil to boost their vitamin D levels and seek refuge in their rustic cabins in the woods. Many a Scandinavian has dreamed of calling it quits and moving to warmer, sunnier, and more hospitable latitudes. Some entertain the idea every winter, and a few retirees actually act on it. But more than anything, Scandinavians get through the winter by maintaining a sense of normalcy. Snow happens. Sleet happens. Ice happens.
Cold temperatures happen. Life goes on. The trains may not run on time after a big snow dump, but society doesn''t shut down either. Weather-related school closures are virtually unheard-of. In the spring, crocuses and coltsfoots start poking through the ground, the days keep getting longer, and vitamin D stores are finally replenished. In the cities, wool blankets pop up on café patios--a sign as sure as any that the season is about to turn. As the snowmelt starts to drip from the rooftops, survivors of the seemingly everlasting winter flock to the cafés, wrap themselves in blankets, and turn their translucent faces toward the fic.