The "news"

I promised myself that I wouldn't fall in the "big conspiracy theory", but as 2014 ended, a lot went on in my mind.



About three years ago, for different reasons (including not having a television anymore), I stopped watching the news. It kinda happened one day, without even noticing it. No more newspapers, online news, tellie, nada. The first year was a bit awkward, balancing between the guilt of not keeping myself up to "what's happening in the world" and the leisure of not bothering with wars and deaths that had become a daily feed of "information".
For those is still trust the news, here's a funny example from the USA :

Thanks to social media and not being completely isolated, I still would hear of "the big news" through friends. But I would not longer fill myself with atrocities that people continuously perpetrated among each other.

I want to believe that there's good in everyone but that fear turns us in monsters. The fear of being not loved, the fear of dying, the fear of missing something, of losing someone or something you love…
I also believe that we have the possibility, if not the power, to love ourselves and others. The ability to be at peace with ourselves. On that road, many helpers are found. Some people walk on it thanks to meditation. Others open themselves through arts. Nature can as well help to build a connection with oneself and free him/her of all the fears that person carries.
It's a beautiful road made of mirrors to teach us about the human-nature. On that path, fighting reveals itself in its true self : a fear we are so deeply possessed with that hurting becomes the only option. Once at peace and connected to ourselves, the fight becomes an item from the past and we can focus on a new future.

Now let's be honest, it's not an easy road. But it's filled with small "insignificant" delights of life. Even if I write this now, I'm on the road myself. Maybe I'll never be completely at peace, but in the meantime, I enjoy this road so much I wanted to share it with you. It's a joyful roller-coaster that keeps me on my toes and interrogate me on my life and the choice I make.

I'll end the post with a film suggestion : Wag the dog. It's a 1997 film by Larry Beinhart and starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. The start line is : let's "make up a war" to cover a politician's blunder. Although the subject is media falsification, the film sees it with a comedy angle that turn the whole story of creating a war into a big joke. 

Winter is coming

That's it ! after weeks of rain and foggy weather that clearly reminded me of Belgium, winter is knocking on our door.

Warning : this post is going to be close to an orgy of picture.

So, first, we had a lot of rain this past weeks. It looked miserable, gray, and mostly like this :

Which has it's charm, no doubt. But after hearing so much about the norwegian snow and winter, it became quite sad.

Then, tuesday morning, TADAAAAAM 

Blue sky, sun, and cold. It felt colder than it was, but finally, something seasonal. 

Back from school, we headed up straight to our new gapahuk to light a fire and enjoy this blessed sunny day.

The next day was the christmas-tree-hunt. The mist was back, but the temperature was still a couple of degrees celsius under zero. Fan-tas-tic !

We went north of the house, a bit after the eagle nest. Morten knew a place where we could wander and pick a nice tree. His expectation and standards were high but eventually, we found it ! We've attached a red ribbon on it and tried to memorized the way to it. We'll be coming back for it around the 22nd of December. That's going to be an adventure for sure ! 

This is the osprey nest. The left in august to travel to south Africa. Each year, they come back to the exact same nest. 

Back home, a good cup of ginger tea while watching the birds eating sunflower seeds just in front of the window, delightful ! That said, I'm not convinced the cat would think alike…

And when I thought it couldn't be better without snow, nature still amazed me. Yesterday morning, queen Elsa from Frozen had really been around my house !!

And it's just a magnificent and magic sight.

And we had a tiny little bit of snow during the night. 

Brrrrr !

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow !

Ps !
While winter is on its way, my annual obsession of knitting was back. Nothing beats the joy of creating something yourself, methinks !

(my very first socks !!!!!)

The black plague

As all the people of my generation and younger, I grew up in the oil age. I've never seen the world before it was run by the oil industry. I remember a Tintin comic book titled : "The black gold" which took the belgian hero on an adventure that included the oil companies in arabic countries. The term "gold" is almost hard to hear right now.

Now, we have become dependent on oil. Without oil, no cars, no planes, no agriculture, no food, nothing. 

Or so it seems. The biggest issue with oil, if you ask me, is not that we can't live without it. It's that we can't imagine a world without it. The step looks too high to take, the "sacrifice" too heavy. We couldn't live a descent life if we don't have oil. On the other hand, that kind of speech is what really pleases so much the oil industries and its owners.

I'm not going to talk about the damages and down sides of oil. Knowing the truth about it doesn't alone make a impact strong enough to help us think out of the box. 

On the contrary, we need to look at what we in fact can do, instead of complaining and getting angry. 

A positive action is always more fruitful than passive bitterness. At first, i couldn't take anymore all the scientific news on how we are destroying our earth and at the same time, i couldn't find a way out of it. Then, slowly but surely, thanks to internet, more and more good news have travelled. There are indeed already many folks who have changed their life into a sustainable methods and lifestyle. Creativity and perseverance are the keys that schools and the pressure of modernity have silenced in us. Fortunately, we don't have to re-invent the wheel, it's already out there. 

Besides, following someone else footsteps is easier and much more comfortable. It takes us out  of our "normal and usual" zone, gently and offering support to our wishes.

So, here's a little 50 min long video of a young woman searching for new and old ways of cultivate plants to feed us. 

To think and to do

Since the norwegian classes started two months ago, I have to admit that the work in the woods and garden has been sadly reduced to practically nothing.

Fortunately, last weekend, Morten and I had in a small cabin in Finnskogen has proved to be, and pardon my language, a kick-ass one !

For months and years, we've been making plans,  projects, giving birth to a lot of ideas, new and old.

But in the end, very few have been actually done (including this blog which I've deserted as soon as something else came in my daily routine).

We could argue that some of our plans, like digging and building an underground-greenhouse, necessitate a considered amount of energy and time. Not everything can be done in one day.

But guess what, it only needs 30 minutes a day. We've almost all been there, haven't we. The classical example would probably be the daily "work-out" that advertised itself as "only 30 minutes, that shouldn't be too hard to find the time every day". And yet…

Never-the-less, fed up with so many small projects that we had wished to do before winter, it's about time to put those ideas into reality straight away.

The first one was the left-over of the wood fire. It might look like the less exciting one, but since autumn started so early, the wood we had already cut, split and put in the shed didn't look enough any more. We had still a pile of the thin trees that the lumberjacks had cut and left there. So, there we went, "only for 30 minutes", under the rain.

It's a interesting thing, those 30 minutes. Because, as soon as the first 10 minutes were past (where you do realize you should indeed exercice more often), the pain and tiredness from the effort flew away. After two hours of continuous work, a whole pile of wood was cut in small logs !

Then, straight after the cabin trip, the second long dreamed project was brought to life : a fire place in the hill behind the house.

Since I've known him, Morten has been talking about it. He had already gathered the poles to make a gapahuk (small shelter). But nothing had started yet, just the idea and half the material. So, you can imagine the joy and happiness of finally building it ! 

So, this is our inspiration from the small cabin in the wood : 

I had personally never seen a fireplace like that and therefore it was close to a revelation ! Simple and practical. I loved it at first sight. It was the kick I needed, or rather that we needed.

Our version is a bit bigger as you can see : 

And, yes, we'll have a view of the lack from that hill !! The stones are from nearby. Initially, the people who lived here long ago removed them from the field. It felt a bit weird to carry those same stone back in the field, although they're more "organized" now.

Now here's the gapahuk, step by step. 

So far it took us one long after noon for the fire place and the walls. We are now waiting for some good weather in order to make the floor and the roof (the same day preferably). We have covered the ground with more stones to limited the grass from growing through. 

We're not engineers, so maybe some of this may look a bit wobbly, but that's not the point. The point is we've finally created what we wanted, and it's moving forward ! 

As a conclusion, I will resume my activities here in this blog as well as outside. 

Winter is coming…