In this great wide bewildering world, there are all kinds of travelers. The notion might first conjure up images of people passing through airports or sharing a drink with Rick Steves in some lowly but well-lit European dive, or perhaps oogling a row of hummingbird feeders in the tropics, giant cameras at the ready. One might also think of people sunning on the Riviera or jamming up the roads at Yellowstone or jamming up everything everywhere during the Thanksgiving holiday and the fact is, such possibilities are truly endless when one starts pondering.
But the fact is also that there are many kinds of travelers out there, like those dandelion spores blowing around in midsummer, on their way to add some color to somebody’s perfect lawn come next spring, or those birds that show up in your yard or at the beach during the warm season but which disappear the rest of the year. And then there are things like that virus we’ve all heard so much about, that you may have even personally hosted for a few days or longer before it traveled on, and one hopes that went well for you. If not, you’ve my condolences.
But the topic at hand is travel of the homo sapiens variety, specifically of the type one might call leisure or pleasure, as opposed to that human travel inspired by family obligations or commerce or employment or unfortunate circumstances that leave one no other choice but to get the hell out.
My wife and I have been blessed to live in circumstances that have allowed us to travel for fun, curiosity, and adventure, at regular times in our lives. There are those, of course, who prefer to never venture far even if they could, and at the other extreme there are those who are forever on the go to someplace. At some point a long time ago, the most prominent of these were known as jetsetters, who tended to travel between places like the French Riviera and London and New York City and for whom the operative word was “glamorous” though for many they were just a new wrinkle on what has always been known as the “idle rich”.
The speed of jet travel had made this lifestyle possible, and the irony is that it was jet travel that opened up the world to the masses of people who could finally afford to travel and for whom glamor was the last thing on their minds. Think youth hostel and B&B and the like, as opposed to five-star hotel.
Or think humble lodging in the most unglamorous and obscure places in the world and you get to what has become known as ecotourism, which has become our travel style of choice, for the most part. Traveling for pleasure is all about finding your joy, and ours always includes beholding the natural world in all its infinite glory and variety in those places where it presents at its primitive best, and part of the package tends to include heat and biting insects and arising early each day and often as not packing a bag lunch so as to maximize “hours in the field”, as the trip guides describe it. Not for everyone, of course, but popular enough to make it a key part of the economies of many countries in what most call the developing world. Rick Steves does not go to these places, except maybe in his spare time and maybe in secret, as it might hurt his brand. Rick’s still great, though.
Except for a single youthful adventure a long time ago, we’ve spent no time in Europe, choosing instead places like the Everglades and south Texas and Costa Rica and Honduras, and recently the southern Portuguese countryside, looking for bustards and hoopoes and more, on our first European eco trip.
Of course, serious eco travelers with enough resources and time go to such places as the Galapagos and Antarctica and Madagascar and Borneo and all those locales featured in National Geographic tv specials, but our aspirations and life circumstances have precluded such journeying, which in a way brings glamor once again into the travel equation when you think about it, though perhaps only glamor in it’s broadest sense.
All of which leads to our most recent decision to break out and travel to the most glorious destination we’d yet considered: Lapland! Northern Finland and Arctic Norway! Tundra! An island covered with 10000 breeding seabirds (and their guano)! Talk about appealing! Of course, it helps if you like that kind of thing in the first place, and it is a fact that very few of our friends consider this the kind of travel they’d ever consider, and I suspect some find it all a bit inscrutable. This is a vacation?
There were many considerations at work for us here, making a decision that the usual traveler might find curious. Actually, the “usual” traveler likely finds all eco-destinations curious, if not downright distasteful. We liked that it would not be hot and steamy, as we’ve done our share of that. And north is where so many birds go to breed, and this would be in peak nesting season – talk about thrilling! And we’d get to experience the midnight sun, and forever have bragging rights about having been above the Arctic Circle. Our friends would all be insanely jealous, surely.
The fact that we might face serious circadian rhythm disruption and the possibility of ten million aggressive mosquitoes (a conservative estimate, that) were not serious concerns. It helps to be cavalier about such things if you’re a dedicated eco tourist. For that matter, does Rick Steves always get a good night’s sleep? One wonders.
Another factor in our decision was the fact that we knew almost nothing about that part of the world, except that it’s dark and cold for much of the year, that they’re all socialists (not true) who pay high taxes (true), and that life in the far north can give one a certain grim aspect about things, at least at times. Think Edvard Munch and The Scream, Henrik Ibsen’s somewhat gloomy plays (a double suicide!), and the stark visual grimness of Ingmar Bergman’s movies, almost all filmed in black and white. Don’t stream Hour of the Wolf or The Seventh Seal if you’ve been having a particularly bad day. Smiles of a Summer Night, later remade into a Woody Allen comedy, is a curious outlier. Of course there’s also Bo Derek and those notable “erotic dramas” (according to Wikipedia) from the 60s, I am Curious (Blue) and (Yellow), which I learned much later are the colors of the Swedish flag and not code words for varieties of kinky sex. But now I am seriously dating myself and moving in an undesirable direction, so enough.
What I knew about Finland specifically tended to be odd disparate things: did you know that their air force’s insignia has included a swastika since its founding in 1918? (I’ve been an airplane buff since I was a kid) Which only recently got discretely dropped in 2020? Of course there are swastikas and there are swastikas, as it is a religious symbol from ancient times, but still, once the Nazis came and left one would think it might’ve been a good idea to just let it go, and they didn’t. Finnish pride? I also know Finland for its great rally drivers, always seen careening at insane speeds down gravel roads in snowy landscapes, most often at night. And I know Finland makes the best licorice in the world, sold under the Panda brand in the US, a truly grand product that puts those black and red twisted things in your Halloween grab bag to shame. There’s a lot more to say about licorice, here, as we will see.
The point is, I knew less than nothing about Finland, and even less about Norway, other than the fact that North Sea oil has made it the richest country in the world, even while Norwegians are switching to electric cars quicker than anybody. Maybe they know something. Oh, and weren’t those Olympics in Lillehammer just lovely, and aren’t those Norwegians terrific in the biathlon?
So what could be more exotic than to go someplace about which you know nothing? Or even better, to go to the end of the earth? Just think about it: a dramatic bleak treeless rocky tundra landscape that abuts the Barents Sea at the northernmost point in continental Europe, after which there is only the icy Arctic Ocean all the way to the north pole. And at a time when the sun never sets. And all of it a setting for multiple avian species to nest and breed in great numbers, where they’ve been doing this for millennia.
Of course the whole “end of the earth” concept is an arbitrary human construction, with much left to the individual imagination. I don’t remember much from the books mom read to me way back when, but there was this one about a train with the line “From Kalamazoo to Timbuktoo it’s a long way down the track” and I am sure that at that moment in my child’s mind, that train ran from one end of the earth to the other. It was later a shock to learn that Kalamazoo was the town in Michigan where they made Checker cabs, and that the proper spelling of the city in Mali was Timbuktu. One could justifiably think one has reached the end of the earth in the Gobi desert or the Australian outback, or on a mountain peak in the Himalayas or maybe at the bottom of the Marianas Trench (though they say it’s mighty dark down there, totally lacking visual drama to suggest one has reached “the end”). For us this trip’s chosen destination was as unknown and exotic as it gets, and our excitement and anticipation rose accordingly.
Accompanied by some level of fear, of course. This journey, like so many happening in the current moment, was the realization of a covid-delayed plan from two years before. In case you haven’t heard, the pandemic lingers on despite much of the world’s decision to take its chances and get on with living, and there is much confusion in the details about how this is supposed to play out. In the case here, there was the small matter of the US requiring a covid test 24 hrs before one’s departure to fly back to the states, the only country in the world with such a policy at this point. And the potential consequence that a positive test meant an unexpected and unplanned stay in one’s country of departure, which in the case of everyone on our trip would be Finland. All of which meant one holy and expensive mess in the justified imaginations of many, including ourselves. Those Americans willing to play the odds in this matter (and the odds were pretty much in one’s favor, if not excellent, but also not 100% guaranteed) were traveling abroad. Those requiring absolute certainty were not. There was also that smaller group who were re-entering these great United States by land for whom no test was required, as it was only returning air travelers who might be positive that threatened the public health of this great country, or such was the cold scientific logic of the CDC.
Perhaps the distinction between those Americans going abroad intending to fly back vs those not about to risk it might’ve been best summed up by Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry when he asks the guy to consider “Do I feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?” Of course ill fortune in that fellow’s case would’ve meant taking a 44 Magnum bullet to the head, a somewhat worse fate than five unexpected days in Finland. I brought along George Eliot’s brilliant tome, Middlemarch, just in case, which is supposed to be a pretty good book, especially if you once majored in English lit. It’s also a damn heavy load of paper to lug around, and I’ve known some who might prefer a bullet to the head to taking on 700 pages of George Eliot. Those same people also don’t care in the least that they are Philistines, as well they shouldn’t.
But the fears don’t stop there! Recent events had revealed to the geographically impaired American (and isn’t that all of us? especially in this age of GPS?) that Finland shares an 800 mile border with Russia, now most unhappy about the Finns unexpectedly deciding to apply for NATO membership. The timing for a trip to Finnish Lapland could not be more propitious, wouldn’t you say? Again, you either choose to play the odds or you don’t play the game – know what I mean, punk?
Given all this, we still decided to take our chances, along with nine others who’d already signed up. Two others had dropped out at the last minute, for reasons that might have nothing to do with all that has been said thus far. We shall never know, but the fact is they missed something truly memorable, and I hope they get a chance to make up for this loss some time in the future. The glories of nature in this place should endure for the time being, and hopefully forever if humanity gets its act together regarding climate change. The odds of that happening are 50/50 at best right now and those paying attention are not feeling especially lucky, at least not so far. Grab the glories while you still can, or such was our thinking in forging ahead despite the risks, with no regrets.
