Yesterday, I picked raspberries for about an hour, forcing my way through their thorny canes over heaped deadwood, hoping I wouldn't twist my ankle, sweat tickling down my belly, and thoroughly enjoying myself. On Thursday, me and the boys are going, by invitation, to pick blueberries in a neighbors untended blueberry field and, on Sunday, we have been invited mushrooming. Berry picking and mushrooming are quintessential summer activities in Finland, where my mother grew up. And Maine is closer in appearance to Finland than any other New England state. Meanwhile, Aaron grew up in a wood-heated log cabin on a dirt road in the woods. I'm baking dense whole-grain bread like my father used to do and recently instituted Sunday as pancake day, a years-long, on-going tradition for him. Aaron is keen to build a stone hearth for our stove, as his father did. My dad, his siblings, and cousins—all gardeners. Aaron and I both eagerly look forward to the day we have the time and resources to build a sauna and both have Karelian ancestry. (Karelia used to be part of Finland before it was taken over by the Russians in WWII.)
And we didn't set out to live in Maine or in a log cabin for that matter. We simply wanted to get out of the city to somewhere we could have enough land to produce food in some capacity or another. We looked in upstate New York, around Albany and around Ithaca. We looked in Vermont and contemplated many, many other possibilities. But here we are, in the first property we looked at in Maine, breathing the piney scent of our cabin, as white birches shimmy their leaves just outside our windows, wondering was it fate or random chance?
I believe, every painter during Finnish-nationality-growing-up-times has painted a picture just as your photo. - To answer your question from one side. There it is, deep in you.
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