How we make a place our home (ENGLISH)

(If you prefer to listen to the audio recording, scroll down to the end of the post)

We travel to so many places. In some we stay only a day or a little longer. In others, several months, but mostly only in winter.

Travelling in the Scandinavian summer, a certain rhythm has proved comfortable for us at the moment. Day stops only if necessary. Otherwise, about a week visiting people, and two weeks in nature, just for us, just being, with our personal projects, with the family nucleus, at home.

Yes, often it really feels like home when we anchor our road ship "Villa Kunterbunt" for a two week period on the shore of one of Sweden's many lonely lakes.

Basically, the two weeks feel still a bit short every time, but that's the period of time our vegetable stocks last approximately without threatening to go bad. And so these places are always just temporary homes.

But why do we feel at home in such places when we are only there for a short time?

Well, for one thing it is simply the feeling of being in nature, where we always feel comfortable and at home, according to human nature.

For another, it is probably the happiness of finding a home with each other, as family, as lovers, as parents, as soul mates in deep connection.

Of course, it also helps to always have the familiar four walls with you.

These are all factors that certainly contribute to the fact that we can feel at home in so many places, at least for a while.

But all of these are passive things that could just as easily make us feel like being guests (which, after all, we always remain).

To really make a place our home, we have to actively do something about it.

And how do we do that?

First of all, we hang up our homemade bamboo sound chimes, through which the wind plays familiar, muffled tones.

Lou recently made a dream catcher, which now also dangles from the branches of a tree and allows only the good energies to enter our open home.

Then, of course, there is the washing line, which finds its place between the trees less for aesthetic than for practical reasons, but which also gives us the feeling of "here is our home".

If it is not already there, of course, a nice fireplace will be installed: Currently our standard kitchen.

But most of all, we familiarise ourselves with a place by getting to know its individual inhabitants and conditions.

This happens casually, but only by going through the day with our eyes, ears and noses open.

After only a few days we know the primeval gurgle of the water, at the flat stone on the lakeshore. Or the best place to get water for drinking, cooking and washing up.

We know where to find bedstraw, yarrow and ribwort, and which everyday route the mouse or the grass snake takes.

We know the route of the woodcock, and roughly where the cuckoo lives.

Soon we are familiar with the chattering and screeching of the gulls, and we know when they sit in flocks on the small island, and at what time of day only a single guard gull keeps watch there.

We know the hours when the diving birds pass by on our side of the shore to get tidbits from the depths, or when the two geese fly past us every evening.

Every time we arrive at a new place, we observe the ants and soon know where it is easy to lie down on the ground without being bitten by the aggresive ants in this country.

We find our spots: for the siesta, for bathing, for breakfast and for dinner with a sunset view. For storing firewood, for chopping wood, for the forest toilet. For yoga and meditation. Elouan also finds the most suitable places to play in no time. We find places for sewing, mending, carving, writing... depending on the position of the sun and the conditions of the place.

We also notice the changes; two weeks is only a short time, but as we still get sunlight late into the night here in the summer of Sweden, nature unfolds at lightning speed: We can literally watch the blossoms of the pines come and go. And in just a few days, their shoots have sometimes grown ten centimetres or more.

When the north wind blows, it gets cooler, but mostly cloudless. The south wind brings warmth (now up to 30°C... hard to believe that two months ago it was all ice and snow here), and sometimes rain.

It is nice to feel that we are not just guests in the places where we stay.

It is good to get involved with the places that welcome us, to familiarise ourselves with them and their inhabitants. And to give at least a little something back (mostly we collect all kinds of rubbish and throw it away at the next dumping station).

Sometimes, when we see a pair of swans, or two dragonflies dancing on the lakeshore, we wonder how it feels to belong to such a beautiful place. To be a part of it.

Whereas these are in fact merely summer guests themselves. Although for the dragonfly this means its whole life.

Sometimes we dream of doing the same as the animals, or perhaps even better, the trees: becoming an integral part of a place, woven into an ecosystem, taking root, sowing our seeds, making our contribution.

But that is exactly why we are on the road. And that is why we are drawn away again from our entertaining home towns: to find a country that fully resonates in our hearts.

But does this place even exist?

Or do we first have to create the life we envision from dead earth?

More on that perhaps another time.

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