FF, this is kind of off topic regarding your R, but in our local Sunday paper, there was an article in the travel section about five girls who took a vacation in Finland recently. There was a map, and I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't know Finland was right smack up against Russia. (I had a girlfriend who was very bad at geography, and thought Mount Everest was in Alaska!) Have you been to Russia? particularly St. Petersburg? The look so close.
The girls in the article went to Jyvaskyla, Kuopio, Kihnio, and Rovaniemi on the Arctic Circle. They did lots of skiing--cross-country and downhill--, dancing, and drinking. They closed down most bars most nights. Overall, they loved the country and found it particularly beautiful at this time of year. This is the concluding paragraph from the article
Quote: 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 whaever random thoughts enter your head. You have no plan, and you no longer feel as if you need one, 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.
Something about the cold makes me feel immobilized, and it doesn't even get all that cold where I live. I can see that when the outside is so hostile to warm-blooded life and you're kind of trapped inside, it might make you cling to comfort and feel very hesitant to rock the boat. My late husband lived in Alaska for a time, and said that you developed all kinds of strategies for making it through the winter. (A teacher I had once who grew up in New Orleans said they had all kinds of strategies for making it through the sweltering summer! )
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