My Hiding Place

[00:00:00] Hi and welcome to Fall asleep with Henrik. I'm Henrik and you're sleepy and it is what it is. What happens happens and right now there is nothing we can do. Let's go.

[00:00:24] Hi sleepy. Hi and welcome back to my humble abode. I'm here right now and so are you.

[00:00:53] And we're in this context of the podcast Fall asleep with Henrik in which we have very set roles. You and I, I am Henrik and you are sleepy. And you can do whatever you want with a role, sleepy, the title sleepy. You don't have to sleep. You can be awake.

[00:01:14] You can be doing other stuff. I get a lot of emails from people telling me that they use my podcast while doing stuff that are repetitive or boring or just empty.

[00:01:29] Like commuting, cleaning, traveling in other forms like doing laundry and also of course the people who use it to fall asleep.

[00:01:46] There's a lot of people now that reaches out to me telling me their use cases and it's genuinely, genuinely really a thrill to be experiencing the output of all this.

[00:02:03] The outcome, I should say. So if you're new here, just very short, this is a sleeping podcast. I improvise for an hour. I just talk and you can do whatever you want with my voice. Listen actively or put it on in the background. If you fall asleep and you wake up and the episode is still on, I will be here.

[00:02:29] And it's an ad-financed business model, but there won't be any ads in the middle or the end of this episode. Just as you probably heard in the beginning. And that's for me to make money. There is a premium way. You can read it in the podcast description if you want to get rid of the ads altogether. But anyway, it's fine. This could be your hiding place.

[00:02:59] Like one of the earliest episodes I made of this podcast, but the Swedish version, Somnade med Henrik, which means fall asleep with Henrik, is, was about a cabin in the woods and not in the horror film way,

[00:03:18] in the cozy getaway way. And that was, I guess that was way back in 2018. The summer of 2018, that's when I started this weird project that for a few years was just an experiment and then became my whole world. And that episode was actually the one that really kicked it off.

[00:03:49] I don't really know why. Yeah, I guess I was, I guested this TV show at the same time and I talked about the episode and people, new people started to open their eyes or ears or whatever. For this, this podcast, that, that particular Swedish podcast.

[00:04:13] And I sometimes, I, the episode was in the structure of, I was describing my cabin in the woods and it was an imaginary cabin and it was like the coziest thing that you can imagine, but not cozy in a way like fluffy kittens and, and quilts, you know, that, that could be the case too, but not entirely.

[00:04:44] Like you need more than this in order for it to be a believable, tangible place to rest and to escape. And I guess that could be, I could, I could have some use for an escape place today as well. It's been a few years since I escaped to that imaginary place the last time. And it's a place that changes all the time, by the way.

[00:05:17] There's no map to this place. You know it anyway, because you've been walking down this path. Maybe a thousand times over the course of your life. You don't think about it anymore. First, there's this asphalt road and then that gives up. And then there's this gravel road and that stops.

[00:05:45] And then you have to get out of your car and you can park it in this little spot. And you will be, you can be almost certain that there will be no other cars here because this is a one, one way, you know. This road doesn't lead anywhere. And it's very hard to drive. You need a four-wheeler. Yeah.

[00:06:14] Like any car isn't a four-wheeler. It has four-wheel drive. Can you say that? I don't know. Well, my car has four wheels. I don't know about your car. Sleepy. I've heard about three-wheeled cars. That's more of a gimmick though, isn't it?

[00:06:34] I don't, anyway, you can't go up this road, this final stretch of the gravel road using a three-wheeler or even a two-wheeler. You need this very sturdy terrain car. So you park your car there in this little cranny.

[00:06:57] And then there's just this track right into the woods. And in this fantasy, the woods are dense. And it's like a Norwegian wood in a way. A Scandinavian wood. A wood from the northern hemisphere.

[00:07:26] It's deep and kind of chilly, even in the summer. Cool would be the word. Quite cool. And everything. Everything in this ancient forest.

[00:07:45] Because it's not like an industry forest where foresters or whatever you call them do their thing from time to time. These trees are ancient. Some of them are hundreds of years old. And there's also moss like everywhere. And the air changes.

[00:08:14] As I said, it gets cooler and greener and a little wet. And the tree tops of the trees. It becomes stuck. It becomes stuck. And you can feel as you walk through of this track.

[00:08:45] Which you've walked down a hundred times before. You can feel your own breathing slow down. To accompany the track in a way. Accompany the setting. I don't know really why. But it feels like the body trusts this place. Although, potentially there could be a lot of danger here. Walking through a forest.

[00:09:14] Somehow I've never felt alone or scared in a forest. I've done so in cities. But never in a forest. And I don't really know why. There are several things that happens with you as you walk.

[00:09:38] The first thing that happens is that like, it's like the sound evaporates. And I mean, like everywhere there's this far off hum, you know. The engines, the voices, even the low, what is it, electric? The drone tone of being a person. Like it's just the generator of you. Everything disappears.

[00:10:08] It just thins out and then it's gone. And what's left is so quiet that you can actually start to hear the quiet itself. And the quiet itself, surprisingly enough, is a sound. It's a wild, almost electric sound as well. But it's deeper than, you know, the hissing, humming that is you on a normal day.

[00:10:37] It's like you fall in line with the rest of the existence here. That's the sound you hear. And of course you can hear like dripping from the trees. And far away there's this bird repeating itself over and over and over again. It's kind of absurd really how birds can just scream. Well, I know they have a variety of things that they scream from the top of their lungs.

[00:11:04] And I read somewhere, or was it some sleepy that wrote, told me that birds actually have been proven to enjoy their own singing? Which is of course a given. I mean, why would you keep singing if you didn't enjoy it? There's this stone that I always, that you always, I don't know. Is it you or me that walks through?

[00:11:33] I think I'm going to focus on, well, maybe you and I are doing this walk. I show you. So there's this stone by the path that I always pass. And I think of it as the keeper. The keeper of this lands. It's a gray kind of knee high. And it's gray and round and half sunk into the moss.

[00:12:00] And somebody long before me put it there or it put itself there. And I always touch the top of it every time I pass. And I tell you to do so as well. It's not an order. It's a recommendation. I strongly recommend that you touch the top of the stone before entering.

[00:12:25] There are stones. But other than that, the ground is soft. It's so soft that you feel the urge to lay down on it. Moss over roots, over older moss layers of green and gray. That is older than I can even think about.

[00:12:56] Moss can be really old, right? And every step you take gives a little. It's like the forest is breathing back at your steps. I have went here at times taking my shoes off just to feel the moss.

[00:13:21] And so the path just lingers. And it forks a few times. At one place where there's this old pine that fell right across the path years ago. And we have to climb over it. It's not a huge endeavor.

[00:13:50] But it's difficult enough, you know, so that you would feel this journey matters. But if you didn't know what you were moving against, you would feel tempted to think this better be worth it. And to the right of the path, it's higher, drier ground.

[00:14:17] And to the left, it's water. And today we go down toward the water. The cabin is this way. But also it's a nicer choosing of roads.

[00:14:44] It's better to be walking downhill toward water than going uphill toward non-water. Now, I guess this would be considered a deer trail, which is narrower than human trails and pressed to flatness by deer feet, non-human feet.

[00:15:13] Although I've of course been walking here, but it's just me. The track is not my doing. There's been animals making this path without any purpose really, without any meaning, at least not any deeper meaning. They just needed to go somewhere again and again and again. And you and I would do the same thing,

[00:15:45] not just with this path, this particular track, but with our own lives again and again. And we call it exactly that, a path. And the deer is not impressed by this philosophy. Wherever it is at the moment, it's almost always empty when I go here.

[00:16:14] The animals, they've heard me like 45 minutes ago and they've created some distance, a buffered zone. And I feel, sometimes I feel sad that there's this buffered zone between the human ape and the rest of the animal world. At least this part of the animal world that I'm moving through right now.

[00:16:43] There are animals that really live close to us, but we tend not to see them as, you know, wild animals. The trees get older the deeper we go. The young ones at the edge where we entered, they're crowded like it's, they are competing all elbows.

[00:17:13] They're all desperately reaching for the same light. But here, where we are right now, further in, they spread out and they're huge and slow and not in any hurry. The canopies way up high closes in over us. And I feel younger here,

[00:17:43] which is strange in a way because everything around me is so much older, so much older than I will ever get to be. Okay, so that's a sadness as well. Some of these trees was born two or three hundred years ago. Since we're in the Scandinavian northern hemisphere forest,

[00:18:12] there are not much leaved trees. It's mostly, oh my God, what's the name of the trees? We're in the garden. We have trees, pines, and other similar types of trees. And it's, we decided to stop for a while

[00:18:40] because there's this adorable little clearing about halfway in. The trees just decide to stop and give room for grass and a little standing water. And the sky just suddenly enormous overhead after all that green canopy ceiling. I always pause here

[00:19:09] and I feel kind of exposed in a way because I've been covered for, I mean, I've been covered even in the car. I've had the roof over my head and then I've walked for a while in this big ballroom, really, with ceilings. And then now I just have the sky. And I mean, the sky right now is grayish,

[00:19:38] cloudy, grayish. But I know that above that is the blue sky and that blue sky isn't really blue. Well, of course it's blue to you and me, but it's not blue in any real sense. It's just there and it's space. You're looking into space, even though you're looking at a clear blue sky. You're looking right up into space.

[00:20:08] You're looking right up into infinity. And that feeling becomes kind of present as we now stand in this clearing, looking up. And then we move along. We have some water, I guess. And then we cross the clearing. And then we're back under the trees where we belong.

[00:20:38] Or where I have decided I belong. I'd rather be fondled by trees and earth than being a free agent hurling through empty space. So we can see the roof first before we see the rest of the cabin. There's a line of dark wood

[00:21:05] and you can see it through the branches. It's low and kind of reminds me of a sleeping kind of huge animal. And my chest does this same thing every time I see it. It's a kind of letting go that I can't do on purpose anywhere else.

[00:21:36] And I look at you and I can see that you're somehow feeling the same thing although this is your first time here. And I've been here since I was a child. I've been here with grown-ups that really mattered to me. Old people really old people has led me by the hand down this path ages ago it feels. And they're gone now.

[00:22:05] But they're still here in this world this closed off world. And then we're here. And the feeling that I have is really just one word safe. Not safe like locked down locked doors. More safe like being very small

[00:22:35] and being held by something that has no reason to drop you. I don't get this feeling often out in the world. So this is a place where I could get it whenever. I need that. And you are welcome to share this with me sleepy.

[00:23:05] So now we're at the cabin and it's well it's huge if it were to be an animal but it's not huge in any cabin sense. It's small. It's one main room. And yeah well there's a few smaller ones but they are almost like folded around it. It's low and it's grass on the roof

[00:23:34] and even a few flowers and the wood of the cabin has gone grey as silver with age and weather with the wear and tear of nature. I really love that colour. don't you sleepy? I really love that silverish grey that old wooden surfaces on

[00:24:03] buildings and fences and stuff get as they age. They age like in a way like old people's hair. The cabin actually kind of looked like it grew here rather than was built and on my best days I'm not sure whether or not that actually could be true.

[00:24:36] And in this fantasy there is smoke coming from the chimney which makes no sense because I am the only one who lights the fire and I only just arrived we only just arrived but I decide right now that inconsistency is not worth thinking about. There's smoke. Some places are just like this. You don't really need to ask so many questions about everything

[00:25:05] that could actually be true in so many aspects in our lives. Wouldn't it be nice to just have a space where you don't feel like the compulsion to get everything explained to you? Like this place is an enigma and that's exactly the way it should be. The smoke goes up thin and bluish and disappears

[00:25:35] into the canopy. I don't think it ever reaches the sky. It stays up there along with one of the walls let's say the south wall there is a wood pile stacked in a very careful way in a way that I would never stack wood. I am not very good at organizing things.

[00:26:05] Well digitally I am good at organizing things but not in this real wooden world scenario. But I wouldn't be anyway. But I am in this case. each log is facing out. So the round end catches the light and it was me

[00:26:33] that organized them. Although normally I'm not patient enough to stack wood like this and that bothers me a little. But this image comforts me to think of myself as this tidy person with patience and time. In this cabin there lives someone who loves order which

[00:27:03] is me although I simply just can't seem to find the power to create order in my life. The door is heavy and it's a little too low because it's built in a time where people were shorter I guess so we need to duck. I duck every time

[00:27:32] and I think it's a good thing. I really think that houses that matter you should really have to bow your head to come into a place like that especially since it's so quiet it's a humbling thing you need to and you need to just bow down it's a it's

[00:28:05] a thing that you do out of necessity of course but also kind of out of respect and the latch is really simple this simple iron thing smooth from age and hands like mine and others countless other hands and you lift it like

[00:28:35] the hatch and the sound it's a sound one of the oldest sounds in my sound library my inner sound library do you have a sound sleepy that is older than language I mean in your own library of sounds I have one at my grandma's place back in the day she had this cellar and down in the cellar there was this

[00:29:05] hatch down into I guess there was some type of plumbing below the floor or something maybe it was a rest water well or something I don't know but there were always rugs over that piece of it was a small

[00:29:44] opening but with door but in the floor yeah so every time we ran over it it gave a small clicking clunking sound because it was metal so it sounded like clonk clonk and that sound I can still hear it exactly as I heard it back then back in the 70s and 80s I guess that

[00:30:14] place is still there but my grandma and granddad are both dead and other people live there now so now we're in the cabin no we're not in the cabin just yet I'm sorry I need to go out because we haven't really walked around because

[00:30:44] there's a porch and the windows is old it's like it's old glass full of ripples and bubbles so the light wobbles a bit like it's underwater from the outside

[00:31:15] it's it looks almost too good you know because the windows really gives it sort of a dreamy quality and the smoke and there's it's the porch is tiny like barely a step with an old thing that you used to scrape off your boots made from

[00:31:45] an old curved blade set into some wood and here we knock the forest off our shoes the mud and the needles and the bits of the path that always wants to come inside but never can somehow this feels important this is a small ritual

[00:32:13] but it's necessary that you leave the outside outside for the sake of the outside as well the outside doesn't want to be inside and the inside have no place but you can't do

[00:32:42] so with your shoes cut into like the door frame about the height of my eyes there are some marks and I don't know what it says it might be letters like in an alphabet but I don't read that particular type of alphabet

[00:33:12] it reminds me a bit about old North runes but it might as well just be someone measuring a child and their growth against the wood year after year watching it climb but you can run your thumb over the pattern and you can feel like the small cliffs of them

[00:33:41] I've never decided actively what they mean it's a part of the mystery of this place and so you just go in the door simply opens to whoever needs it and that's always me and in this case you so there's this moment

[00:34:12] right on the threshold I have a problem with the word threshold do you say thresh or h-o-l-d right threshold god this is an adventure but

[00:34:42] as we stand on the threshold there's this thing that happens this moment that can't really be understood and that is the duality of it half of me is still in the forest in the cold and indifference of

[00:35:13] nature and half of me is in this very ordered world in this warm comfy orange from the fire and the held you know at this one breath we're in both and

[00:35:43] neither it's like I am right now standing in the doorway of myself we should really learn to be more torable tolerable tora bor tora bor we should really need we should really learn to be more tora bor or what I meant was that we should really

[00:36:12] learn to be more to tolerate the threshold dwelling more to except to be in the borderlands. I am fascinated with the borderlands in all senses of the word, to be both or neither. It's beautiful also because it puts emphasis on what you are in yourself

[00:36:42] because you're not a product of any outer circumstance. You are just you and you're naked in a way on this borderland. The smell in here is the first thing when you go in, because it's somewhat dark in here and your eyes have to adjust.

[00:37:12] So the first thing that your senses catch up on is the smell and it's wood smoke and old paper and dried things like herbs and old canned food, cans. Cans, I mean, I have a lot of canned food. I guess it looks, it smells like old furnitures, you know,

[00:37:41] and old surfaces and also something from the fire, like it smells, yeah, I said smoke, but also warm stone. And it's a very comfy smell. It's the smell of my place. And I've been here for a long, long, long time.

[00:38:10] And I wish that I could bottle this smell. If I could, I know I would never buy any other fragrance. Well, I'm not sure how well it would turn out if I sprayed myself with this scent. I think this scent belongs to a place, not a person. But my scent in combination, yeah, that's something.

[00:38:41] So it's kind of dim in here. It's golden would be the closest word, I guess, from the lamps and the fire. And it never quite reaches the corners. I like that the corners stay dark. A room that's lit all the way to its edges.

[00:39:13] I don't really care for that. I don't know why. I guess I'd like my environment to fade in and out of existence. That sort of creates emphasis on, yeah, as I mentioned earlier, whatever, what even am I, you know? I am on this island surrounded by darkness.

[00:39:44] So there's this iron stove. And that's, I guess you could refer to it as the heart of the room. The room is black and round, a little door where you put the wood.

[00:40:11] And it puts out heat that you feel in your bones rather than your skin. It's a very deep and ancient kind of worm. And I open the small iron doors and I feel the warmth coming out. And I close it again. And the whole cabin, the walls and everything seems to lean in toward it.

[00:40:43] Now the fire is already lit for some reason. But lighting the fire is always the same. I had one of these iron stoves in an old office that I rented a few years back. And this is true. All of the other things here are imagination. By the way, I don't own this cabin, although I would love to.

[00:41:07] But the iron stove that was in my office in the south of Stockholm back in the day, I was really excited that I had an iron stove. And I bought some wood because you can't just go out in the city and cut down trees. So I bought some already cut up wood. And I stuffed it in the stove and then I set it on fire.

[00:41:35] And of course, that particular stove hadn't been used for, I don't know, 50 years or something. So nothing was, you know, rinsed in the piping above. So my little office got filled with this sticky, harsh smoke. And it's actually kind of dangerous to breathe in.

[00:42:05] And I left the premises. And then I got this guy coming to fix that for me. And he said, it's already fixed. And I was left with a feeling that it's me. I really can't make a fire. But the thing is, I can. But it's complicated with stoves because they're like a person.

[00:42:33] You really need to get to know them before you can set them on fire. The same thing goes with people, I guess. Yeah, but this stove, there's no problem lighting a match, starting a fire. And on top of the stove, there's a kettle. And it's not a beautiful, in any conventional sense, kettle. It's dented and it's dark.

[00:43:03] And at this time, it's already warm with coffee. Or it could be tea, if you fancy that more. But in my fantasy, it's coffee. It's always coffee. At the table, there's one chair that is mine. I always sit there. So you can't sit there sleepy.

[00:43:32] I'm sorry. You need to choose another one. There are four others. Because my chair is like, it's like my mug with which I have my coffee. It's dented and almost like, it's dented to a degree. I'm talking about the mug now and the chair as well.

[00:43:58] They are dented to a degree that they appear to the patterns that just covers the surfaces of the chair or the mug. They create sort of a web. And it gives this sensation of depth. Like, when you look into the surface, which I know is just the surface, I get the feeling that it's, that you can dive into it, you know.

[00:44:30] That's actually the case with my favorite coffee cup, my favorite coffee mug in my apartment. It's dark blue. And I've had it for, yeah, 30 years now. And I always have my coffee in that mug. It's a very simple, conventional coffee cup from Ikea.

[00:44:49] But I, I just love to press it gently against my lips and feel the warmth. And look at the patterns that remind me of cracked ice. Dark, cracked, solid, frozen ice. So I sit in my chair.

[00:45:18] And the chair is, has this, there's no cushion. There used to be a cushion, but the, the wood itself is so comfortable that I can sit here for hours. It's, it's not a beautiful chair. The arms are rubbed bare and one leg is shorter.

[00:45:44] So it rocks a little if I lean, but it's, it's like the chair recognizes me when I sit in it and there's a blanket. Yeah. Here I go with the blankets and the quilts and stuff. In order to make it comfy, you need textiles, right?

[00:46:08] I'm not necessarily sure that's the case, but this blanket is sick. It's not sick, sleepy. Please, Henrik, try and speak correct English, please. For the love of God. There are English speaking people listening. They have the hardest time.

[00:46:31] When you say that the, the, the blanket is sick, then their whole immersion just goes out the window. It's a thick gray blanket. And there's, and you can sit in another chair is equally torn, but in a different way. And one whole wall of this room is books.

[00:47:01] Books and they're leaning and stacked and double shelved. There are more books here than, yeah, more books than I, I guess, originally planned. That's the thing with books.

[00:47:26] You just find them and you fall in love with them and then you keep them and you carry them with you. And the moving thing is torture. I mean, the boxes with the books, they are that like the worst thing to move. But as long as you don't move, then books are a wonderful thing. And under the window, there's a desk.

[00:47:54] And this is where I write, when I write. And in the corner, there's an old record player. Like a really old with, with, you know, this horn, like this brass horn. And this, this brass horn has gone green at the edges because it's really old.

[00:48:18] And the only thing that it ever wants to play is like, what's the word? Baroque. Can you say baroque? Like music from the 1600s. The long, slow areas. Music written for voices that don't exist anymore.

[00:48:45] Right now it's playing something from Händel's opera, Xerxes, Xerxes. And it's an aria, aria. It's not an aria. It's an aria. About a tree. And about the shade of a tree.

[00:49:12] And the singer thanks the tree for its shadow. All of the things in the world to be grateful to. And there was this man that wrote this 300 years ago. It's such a beautiful piece of music.

[00:49:42] And on the floor, there's this rug. And this rug is so old. That as with the mugs and the chairs, the pattern has become depth. You can really see traces of people crossing over this for generations. And the lamps are oil with glass chimneys.

[00:50:11] And the light moves. It's not an electric light. It moves. And there's a clock on the shelf. And it stopped a long time ago. And I've never wound it up. I never wound it up. Can you say that?

[00:50:39] Its hands show quarter to ten in the morning. And on the wall, there's a map. A hand-drawn map of somewhere in the vicinity. I haven't been able to point out the exact place. Nor why there's a map of this particular place.

[00:51:07] But it's old and it's hand-drawn. And pinned beside the map, there's this drawing. A drawing of a mom and a dad and a child. And it's painted by me when I was a kid. And it's been there since 1979, when I was four years old.

[00:51:36] And I went there with my parents and my then two younger siblings. So I guess it's not so much left of the episode. We really need to move on if I'm to describe the rest of the cabin. So the other rooms are not as big.

[00:52:06] But there is a kitchen like the size of a cupboard. And it has like a sink and a window. Looking into the trees on the outside. And everything is less than a one arm's reach away from everything else. So cooking here or preparing food here is like, yeah, it's a tricky thing.

[00:52:36] You can't be two people, which is kind of great, you know. Haven't you been in that situation? I don't know which one you are. The one that takes initiative and says, let's cook some soup. Or the one that says, it would be really good to have soup right now. But I don't have the energy to make soup. So in this cabin, this is all taken care of.

[00:53:02] Because you can't, because the one just sitting around always feels guilty for sitting around. But here, there's no other way. You can't be two people making the soup. There need to be one person. So if you're first, if you decide we will have soup, then soup there is, you know. The other one just has to sit back and just watch them, you know. And it's a cozy thing, so you can watch me when I make soup if you want.

[00:53:31] I have this great red lentil soup that I really like. I'm going to do it sometime. And there's a pantry. And there's a little alcove in the main room, which contains a bed. And I sleep here. And you will have to take the couch, which is in the other part of the room.

[00:54:02] Or maybe if I'm being a gentleman, you can have the bed and I can take the couch. We'll see. And there's a small window right above the bed. And there is an outdoor, what do you call it? When you need to go to the toilet. There is no running water, obviously.

[00:54:27] So it's an old mud kind of solution. I don't know the English word for it. It's the loo, you know. So you need to go out in the yard. But inside the cabin, you can wash your face over the sink in the quote-unquote kitchen. Yeah, that's the cabin.

[00:54:58] It's five minutes left. Should we go out again before it gets too dark and look around in the surroundings? So the garden around the cabin, it really is not a garden. It gave up being a garden a long time ago. If it ever had these, the ambition, this is something wilder and also better.

[00:55:31] There are still like a rose bush. But everything has gone feral and enormous. And at some point, someone has decided that I should grow something here, herbs or whatever. But everything has escaped and colonized all of the surrounding. And I love it. I wouldn't have it any other way.

[00:56:00] And there's a well. No, it's not a well. That's such too much of a cliche. And also, it's a bit of horror movie thing. Open wells like this. It's a water pump with a closed up well in the middle of the yard. And it takes a few draws for you to get water. But the water here tastes amazing.

[00:56:32] And there's a big, big tree. It's not a pine. It's a leaf bearing tree. It's not an oak. But it's something similar. So this is an uncommon tree here. And I guess that's why the house stays here. Because this tree is maybe 500 to 600 years old. And there's a bench.

[00:57:01] Gray, silver gray as the cabin. And here I sit in the morning on fine days and have my morning coffee. And also on rainy days, I bring my umbrella and I get out here and I sit and I have my coffee. And I look exactly like I did when I woke up. I don't do anything. I don't fix anything. Sometimes I don't even wear anything. I just go out and I sit here, you know. Because who would see me?

[00:57:30] I mean, I'm going to make an effort here now when you're here. I'm not going to go all feral while you're here. There are some rules. There's a bird that's always here in the summer. A black bird. And also the few, the latest few years there's been this fox that always comes out at dusk.

[00:57:59] Carefully scouting the yard. I think it's curious because it's not always people here. From the back of the cabin, there's this thin path that leads off down to the water. And this path is darker. And the trees are smaller and they lean in. The ground is wet here.

[00:58:31] Because there's water. You can feel it in the air as well. Coolness. It's a held breath in a way. So this is where I go down to take my morning swim. The closer you get to the water, the more mushroomy the place becomes.

[00:58:59] They are beautiful, but they also look kind of haunting at times. And then you can hear the water before you see it. Not a sound exactly. More like an absence of other drier sounds. A flattening in a way. A hush that forests makes when it gets close to something cool and still.

[00:59:25] And at the edge of the trees, just before the water, there's this single standing stone. Enormous, taller than us. Gray. And clearly placed there by hand. By some huge hand. Several hands. Absolutely several hands.

[00:59:51] Nobody alive knows who placed this or why or what it marked. There's no etchings on it. But they mark the beginning of the forest tarn. And this is my favorite place. So we'll end here.

[01:00:21] Because the tarn is small and round and totally, totally still. Ringed by trees that sort of look at themselves, their own reflections. And the water is black. Like pitch black. But it's not surface black.

[01:00:49] It's black that has, as with so many other things in this place, depth in it. A black that you could fall into, you know. And it doesn't sparkle or ripple unless you throw a stone or something in it. It just holds the way. It's almost like a surface, you know. Yeah, this is my favorite place.

[01:01:20] So what do you say? Sleepy. Let's take a swim.