Familiar leaves

All day in nature.

Sunlight, sifting through the leaves, wet moss and the smell of wild rosemary, blackbirds singing their little melodies. Ice melting, tiny streams and creeks bubbling, the smell of smoke around the campfire, chopping firewood. All these little things are what makes a good day good.

(sorry, I'm feeling poetic. Just suffer through it!)

This just might be my last year in my home country, who knows, maybe in a year I'll be gone. Out in the wild, in a different country somewhere around the world. I want to appreciate all these tiny details that make my home really home. These tiny aspects of everyday life, those we love and adore but never pay too much attention to.

Nature, especially, feels like a home to me - I could spend all day every day just hiking through the forests, camping in a place somewhere in the universe, lying under the stars and listening to nature hum its silent sounds. I feel in peace when I walk, walk, walk, farther and farther from the unnecessary problems of life, of school, of me. I see birds swimming in the countless lakes and ponds around my favourite hiking place. There are many campsites, surprisingly and uncharacteristically friendly people sitting around the campfire, roasting their sausages and drinking coffee from a metallic thermos flask.

I.. don't understand people who don't like nature. Yes, there are mosquitoes, and they suck your blood and are terribly annoying, and there's wildlife, and you'll get blisters and little cuts and nicks and maybe bruises, too, but what does it matter? How can someone not love nature? How good flowers smell, how soft sand feels, how fun it is to hop from one rock to another? How your adrenaline gets going when you attempt to climb a steep hill? How birds chirp and sing, and how the wind blows and rustles the leaves and makes your hair twirl? How goddamn good it feels to walk for hours, and then make a little fire and sit and drink tea. Or go rowing, listen to the soft sounds of waves and water ripples, gliding through the water in what feels like endless silence. Or, I don't even know, cross-country skiing in the north, cross-country cycling, climbing to trees? Collecting mushrooms, trying to stay alive in a swamp? I don't think I'll ever understand, maybe I was never too bright to begin with.

I hope my next home country will have a lot of nature. I don't think I'd ever want to live in a hot, southern country, since forests and little hills and mountains are kind of close to my heart. (Besides, I'd sweat to death lol.) Nature is weirdly important to me, even though I've never really understood it before.

As you may be able to tell, I went for a hike today. It happens quite often since there's forest literally everywhere and there are many marked routes and trails that are very fit for hiking. It's getting warmer here, even though today was a colder day, and most of the snow has already melted and turned into restless little streams that made my toes wet. My family is pretty active in hiking and other nature-related activities, and we like to spend time together by going to short pseudo-hikes. It's often just my dad and I, though, but it doesn't matter. We walk in silence, or maybe we have small conversations, it's not the talking that matters, but the nature, the surroundings, the smells and sounds and sights. I'm looking forward to going to an over 80-km-long hike with my friend this summer. We're going to be sleeping under the stars, or in our tiny tent, and eating some "delicious" hiking food. It's going to be extremely fun, but also probably pretty exhausting. We're going to travel for over 8 hours before we even arrive at the route, it's an adventure!

Like I said, this might be my last year here. What a scary, nerve-wracking, exciting thought... When my friends leave, I'm going to become restless. I'm going to feel left-behind and want to quickly leave, too. But for now, I'm feeling a little scared ahaha. I'll start a life of my own, which means I'll have to do everything by myself. I won't have anyone in my apartment, I won't have anyone to cook to, to talk to when I'm feeling down. Many of my evenings will be spent in silence. Perhaps I'll have to make friends in a country full of strangers, in a country completely foreign to me. Maybe I'll study, live, make friends, work with a language that isn't my mother language - English, German, Swedish? This is a weird phase I'm going through, having to become an adult and starting my own life.

Because I honestly might not be here for long, I really want to appreciate all the great things in both my country and my home town. This place is an awkward city in between of big and small, but there are a lot of things to do and to see. I want to hike as much as I can, because nature is what I love - I've grown up running in the forests next to my house, spotting lily-of-the-valleys and climbing on top of rocks. There are so many tiny places I treasure. Also outside of nature, such as the coffee shops my friends and I go almost every day to, and the library, and the riding stables, the parks... This is my home town, I want to memorize all the things that mean something to me.

There are so many things I want to do! There's a course I'd like to take, in woodcraft. It teaches a lot of useful things in the wilderness, even the basics of hunting. I'd like to learn pottery, so I'm thinking of taking part in a course related to that as well... And there's a lovely cat shelter, in which I'd love to volunteer. There's also a cafe for the elderly here, maybe I could volunteer there as well, to give something back to the place that has been pretty good to me? Well, I'll have time when all my friends graduate in the winter lol. Then I'll be alone, which is also fricking scary, let me tell you. Literally everyone will either already be in a university, or traveling abroad by then. I have nothing against being alone, but... It's different to be alone and do alone things voluntarily. Then I won't have anyone to go to coffee shops with, no one to cook with, no one to have movie nights with, no one to go out with. You may think that I'm completely over-reacting, but I'm not lying when I say every single friend of mine is either older or my age, and they'll be gone. I'll be the only one left. Ha. Well, then I'll have time to take part in those courses and hopefully make new friends.

Friends.. They'll leave. This is the last summer. God, why am I feeling so sad all of the sudden? Nothing lasts forever, but how did this happen so quick? All of the sudden, we'll soon leave to our own paths. Mine is still completely open since I'm not even sure which country I'd like to move to, but my friends are closer to packing their bags and flying off, so they already have strict plans. I won't see them again for god knows how many years, if ever. I don't know if we'll ever see each other again... So, this summer we'll do a lot of great things together. Since then we'll say our goodbyes, and hug and cry, and I already have something uncomfortable in the back of my throat when I'm writing this. Well, I've made a lot of plans with my closest friends, plans like going to road trips, hikes, biking, swimming, drinking, dancing in the rain... God, I don't want to say goodbye.

I won't talk about my family now. I'm feeling melancholic and would probably cry if I imagined not seeing them for months, months to no end, maybe just a couple of times a year. I'll form a home, a home of my own, without them. I know the bird has to leave the nest, and I'm very excited about it. I feel like a tiny bird, trying to flap her wings for the first time. Tiny, quivering, fragile, nervous, excited, ready, vulnerable.

Ah, I got a little sad. Outside the window, the sky is dark blue and I can see the pitch-black silhouettes of the trees surrounding our house. Somewhere there, the moon is shining, and the stars are shining their ancient light, too. God, I love nature, I can just look outside the window and focus for a few moments, and my raging heart calms down a little bit.

Let me talk about more nature- and future-related things! I'd love to live in the countryside, in the far future when I already have a job and enough of the $ to have a house of my own. It'd be so dark when I went out of the door that I could see the stars and the Milky Way, and I'd keep track of the moon phases. My kitchen could be full of herbs, so that I could make cosmetics and tea and lotion and soap and all these great things. And I'd love to have a dog, maybe a spaniel or a labrador, and we'll go running every day. Maybe I'll learn how to hunt. Maybe the summers will be warm and the winters cold and I'll watch the seasons change in my little house in my little corner of the world. I hope I'll have a lot of friends, family, a boyfriend, so that we can spend time in my little loving house.

And the thunderstorms!!! My tiny house will shutter and the rain will lash onto its roof tiles and I'll shiver of excitement in the darkness of my candle-lit living room (my heart just started racing at the thought of that). I love thunder a lot. And I'll look out of the kitchen windows when it's raining, but all of the sudden I'll want to go outside, and the sky is dark grey and the rain is heavy and I'll run faster than ever, until I fall.

..sorry, I got too excited.

Still, I want to be optimistic about the future.

Honestly, I can't wait to go to university, I love studying and I'll feel like I'm finally doing something different. I'm also looking forward to get out of this town, as much as I love it. I've been here for long enough. I can't wait to meet new people, to have a new environment, to have challenges and new coffee shops. But, I hope that my new place won't be too urban, it's just that nature is so soothing and calming...

This summer I'll devour all the lovely nature, the people I love, and turn them into lasting memories. I'll keep them inside of me forever, so that I can take them from their little boxes and remember all the goodness in the world, and smile at my time in my home town. These little hikes, these little adventures. These good things in a hectic world.

And I'll smile, wherever in the world I am, whether alone or not, and I'll remember what makes a good day good.