Thursday 10/2-2011

It’s still dark and heavy snowfall when we are leaving Vemdalen behind at 6.30 thursdaymorning. All restlessness and “have-to-do”s disapperared sometime during the day yesterday. Now it’s all about horse, route and bells ringing. I’ts amazing to have all these opportunities to choose in everyday life but it also makes you spread too thin a lot of the time. It’s a wonderful experience to be able to say that this moment in life I’m exactly where I want to be. No choices I would have altered, no regrets.
There are tracks of elk in the morninglight and when we reach the old landing field in the middle of the forest, people have met up with warm drinks and traditional singing to call for their grazing animals and makes the moment otherworldy. She horses are steaming from the work and the cold snow keep falling down on us like a cold blanket. The swirvling snow is also effecting visibility in traffic and when we have to follow a bigger road one of the sleigh is almost hit by a car driving far too fast crashing into the snow-wall next to us. Cathastrophy avoided but that far too close. People are inviting us for coffee and soup along the way and we make a longer stop in Hede village for a veterinary-control of all horses, to make sure everybody are doing well and to get promission to cross the Norwegian boarder. The last part of the day we are walking along an old railway track that never was completed. It will be dark again before we reach our final destination of the day.
I realize while writing that I’m telling you a lot about our stops, meals and practical challenges. It’s partly because we wouldn’t have been able to do this without all the support and help from people around us and perhaps because it’s easier to describe. But the experience is not really about the start and stops or even reaching the final destination it’s about the way inbetween, the cooperation between man and horse and the determination of doing this together. Sometimes demanding lifelong experience to do so. To me the journey is a magic combination of nature and fellowship. Feeling the bleak wintersun warming your face while treetops are passing by, closing my eyes to hear the sound of the snow under the sleigh and the bells chiming. Ones in a while someone jumps over to our sleigh for a visit maybe because he needed a walk to warm up or just wanted to share something to eat or a laugh. Moments like these holds the magic that make us come back to and long for this journey each year.
Well, enough of philosophical elaborations… Dinner is waiting and lot’s of music, wine and singing.