It’s no surprise that this particular Substack is about changing your experience with life. And maybe Nordic novelty will be the thing that leads you to a different experience with life. I’m hoping so with this post.
A few years ago, Linda Akeson McGurk wrote a trendy book about rearing children with a more integrated experience with the natural world. The book is called There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom's Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids. The title is from the Noridc expression, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” The book helped introduce the Swedish word friluftsliv to a new audience. Her latest work is more solely about friluftsliv.
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What does this wildly exotic and fun-to-say word mean? McGurk writes that
The Norwegian government defines friluftsliv as embracing nature and enjoying the outdoors as a way of life, a "possibility of recreation, rejuvenation and restoring balance among living things”.
She further helps non-Swedes like me fall in love with the idea by adding two caveats: friluftsliv is non-motorized and non-competitive enjoyment of nature. She adds physical exertion is often involved but can be as stripped down as a walk around the neighborhood. She further suggests the deeper into wilderness one gets, the more benefits one derives from friluftsliv.
You’re no longer just taking a short walk in the woods or around a park; you’re engaging in friluftsliv! Feel fancy and Nordic? You should. She advocates “walk and talk” meetings around a trail. She advocates a voice recorder and a follow-up email if we fear losing focus on the topics discussed. Meetings would be shorter and more enjoyable, and we’d get our steps each day.
The inhospitable winters of the Northeast led me to listen to the voices of people who trek around the Swiss Alps in cold, damp, limited sunlight and yet somehow manage to keep sane and mostly pleasant demeanors.
Watch this video from Swedish clothing maker Fjallraven and pay particular attention to the lady on the left—a delightful disposition while describing clothes to survive the most unenjoyable weather on earth. The company’s educational videos changed my understanding of how to thrive in cold, damp conditions. They gave me a deeper understanding that we mainly chose our reaction to even the worst of nature.
Rather than making friluftsliv some twice-a-year experience or even the more frequent camping jaunt, McGurk invites a more down-to-earth and integrated experience. Calling it “The Open-Air Life” in a book by the same title, she suggests making nature's nearest and most available version your daily habit. Rather than yet another thing to do, allow the experience to be where you do life—drawing away from to-do lists but not fully seeing the space as a place for no accomplishments.
A recent experience
On a recent morning, I entered the woods off our deck and allowed its conditions and sights to overtake me. It brought the sound of a spotted sandpiper at the edge of a small lake. A bird that would have jetted away if I hadn’t slowly entered its foraging space, acting like an unthreatening witness.
Soon, the din of the annual cicadas raised and lowered in a trill.
It’s fun to find the early surrenderers to fall in late August. Those leaves that jump the staring gun and descend the forest flow with hints of what their kindred leaves will show in mere weeks.
A catbird pair called back and forth from within heavy cover. Maybe they are talking about their plans to pack for the coming migration. All their more colorful neighbors have either fallen silent or started to depart.
Finally, I stood in my sandals in the leak from a spring that came off the hillside and cut the trail. The cool water had journeyed long and emerged into the dappled sunlight of the forest floor. Now it descends into the lake and one day seaward. For now, it passes my bare feet with a rushing chill.
I nibbled wild allegheny blackberries and watched a deer take its share of a farmer’s harvest. We stared at one another for a moment, suspended in shared enjoyment of our friluftsliv
I invite you to surrender into a union with who you are. We avoid the truth that from this we emerged, to this we’ll return. And we do so with a touch of hubris. It’s as though we’ve defined success by entering nature with as many layers between us and it as we can afford. It’s both a refutation and a denial of a beautiful truth. Be well, Feral Souls.
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