Week 10: Nurmes to Kuhmo

July 15, 2003

“That wolf…” She insitsed on speaking English, but the words came only after a painful struggle. “That wolf…..ate my husband…”

I balked. Wolves don’t eat people. They don’t even attack people. But there was emotion in her voice. “That wolf…”

I reached Saramo on July 9. The village had shrunk since the war. The store and restaurant now belonged to a family whose farm had collapsed with the advent of EU regulations. There was a bridge, a shuttered bakery, a broken gas-pump and the Fishing House, a fresh wooden building with oversized windows, a grey schist door step and fishnets on the wall.

The owner was a plump, unquestioning mother who passed the day curling pastries with her long, laquered fingernails and dusting her collection of Mannerheim statues. She was very kind. Dinner was bits of moose piled thickly on creamy mashed potatoes with a side of lingonberry jam that smelled of pine needles.

The other two customers were Russians and sat by the window watching the rain. One was a seductive young beauty with a soft mouth and wandering eyes. Her pants were skin tight. Her partner was an older, thin man with the eyes of a killer. He stared me down furiously; making sure I understood what belonged to him.

But I was interested in the wolf on the wall. It was small for a wolf, its fur snow white and its eyes light grey. Dark weasle pelts, tacked to the wall, framed the stuffed animal. “That wolf ate my husband….mikä on koira?”

“Dog?”

“That wolf ate my husband dog. This dog.” And she produced a portrait of a sad, fat rat-dog sitting, wide-eyed, on a leatherette couch. I nearly said “Good ridance.” but ordered a beer instead. It rained all night and all the next day.

At the Peurajärvi Fishing Area I laid my tent in a monoculture of even-aged, evenly thinned pines. Blueberries, pink heather and light blue jäkälä carpeted the forest floor. Yellowing reeds lined the lake. A silent, solitary RV was parked nearby. Five boats, all painted yellow and powered by oars circled the lake as if a carousel. No one was catching fish. Silence reigned. It was perfect.

I met Justani while floating in the lake. “Too cold for me!” He said from the shore in nearly perfect English. He was a fit boy of fourteen and he came from a farm near Isalmi. He said that he speaks English so well because all his friends moved away when farming got too tough and that, now, he has nothing to do but study and watch American TV shows. He said that he likes to fish but never caught anything in all his life. “Dad says thats not the point.”

Justani wanted to know about the Southwest and he sat outside my tent asking questions: “Have you been to Lake Michigan? Is the Grand Canyon in Colorado? Is there water in the desert? Can the birds fly over the mountains? Have you ever seen an elk? What does bear taste like? What does beer taste like? Can you kill a bear with a bow and arrow? How big is a mountain lion? Have you ever seen a wolf?”

“There are no wolves.”

“Why not?”

“They were all killed off about 80 years ago.”

“All?”

“All.”

“Why?”

“People were afraid of them and they sometimes killed cows and sheep. So they shot them all.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Have you ever seen a wolf?”

“Of course. They kill our sheep every once and awhile. I even saw one eat our dog last winter.”

“Really?”

“Yah. She was so fat and old. We let her out to pee and he suddenly appeared and picked her off the step and took her into the forest. It was probobly the biggest thrill of her life.”

“Didn’t you want to kill it?”

“Why?”

Through the evening three cars pulled into the camp area. One was a crunched Toyota and it held four retirees. The other two held two, twenty-something couples. They all crowded around the fire pit and began to drink. Off in the forest a man and a woman began to scream at each other. A car drove into the camping area and spun a half dozen donuts leaving the dust to float into my dinner. Around 11pm Justani’s father hooked the RV to the car and started the engine. “Where are you going?” I asked him.

“Home. In Finland, on the weekends, the forest belongs to the animals.” I had forgotten it was Friday. Then they were gone.

By midnight the drunks at the campfire had pulled the car next to my tent and turned on the dance music (I wasn’t sleeping near the firepit). It echoed across the lake. I could hear a woman crying hysterically in the forest.

I asked them to turn down the radio, that I needed to sleep. But they were too drunk to comprehend. When I asked again, an old man threw a log at me and growled. Then, he tried to shit on my tent. I swung my walking stick at his scrawny, white butt and he ran off laughing, his pants around his ankles. The woman in the forest was still crying.

I lay in my tent, sweating and waiting for them to go to sleep. But they never did. One of the boys sat down just outside my tent and called a friend. When I crawled out of the tent to protest, he nodded and said “terve” as if we were passing on the street. I packed my things. Just before I left I went to the toilet to get some TP. The old man sat in his own shit on the steps of the toilet, his pants still around his ankles. “Hei. Tule tanne.” He said. “Come here.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

The boy talked on the phone, two old ladies piled wood on the fire, the car stereo boomed, a pretty blond girl with long braids lay sprawled in the blueberries, shirtless and snoring. The woman in the forest continued to cry and howl.

It was 3am and a thick fog formed over the lake and moved among the trees. Everything was pink. For a moment, I couldn’t help but recall what an Englishwoman had said after living 20 years in Finland: “Well, I didn’t move here for the people!”

I traced a path along Pine Lake and swam from its beach. A Canadian beaver circled in the middle, slapping its tail. The sun rose, dull, behind a veil of clouds. At 6am I crossed a road. A man sat alone in a van, smoking and looking at the sky. “Wonderful forest.” He said. I crossed and climbed into the Hiddenportii plateau. The air was clear and bright and the lakes too cold to swim. By 11:30am I set my tent on a cliff where the wind would keep the mosquitos away. I wasn’t mad anymore. Then I slept.

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