Dunderbo

(Note: I did not attach a name to this story - ala my 'Friday Column' - but I may end up doing just that if this Tuesday thing becomes a regular occurrence. For now, think of it as a bonus.)

Ahhhhhhhhhh...

What a pleasant afternoon in an (oddly) quiet house. The fire I have been tending for the past two hours is raging, brighter now that it's getting darker outside, reflected in the television that is currently turned off. Mysan the cat just jumped up into my lap, and I felt kind of bad for shoving her away. She is purring, sitting on the armrest of the couch.

This is the winter that I have been pondering over. Though it's not as cold, nor is there as much snow outside as there was in the picture in my head, this just about fulfills my lofty expectations. A house in the countryside, sitting by the fire. And writing.

I've been in charge of bringing in the wood from outside that we use to heat the house with (and holy moly, it takes a lot of freaking wood! About twelve rather large cardboard boxes full of split wood, every three or four days to be precise). Adjacent to the cellar downstairs, where all the fruits and veg and leftover food is kept in the chilly confines of a small stone room, is a large wood-burning furnace that creates the hot water and heats the house (my dad, upon seeing it last summer, with it's multitude of dials and electronic readouts said it looked like operating a submarine). The furnace is not that complicated, and most of those dials don't do anything anyway. It burns wood and makes heat.

When I was here last, after our sailing trip, Mia's dad Börje and I went down to the farm at Blåsbo and loaded up two large, old wagons with wood split by the neighbor, that had originated as trees in his small bit of forest (Richard, the neighbor with the huskies, and I chopped down about twenty of those trees and made teepees out of them that are currently drying in Richard's front lawn). I got to drive the big tractor. The first of those two wagons is parked halfway inside the carport, the other half covered by a rubber grey tarp. The wood is incredibly dry, and burns remarkably well - I have already gone through half a load since getting home from school today in the small wood stove they have in the living room (I have taken over the living room today as my office - the house is empty, rare in Dunderbo, and I'm taking advantage of it).

On Sunday Mia's dad took us shooting. He used to be competitive at the sport (having shown us a globe that he won once in the seventies), and brought out his old .22 caliber rifle. Mia and I, plus her little sister Lisa (Fisa) and her boyfriend Claes drove again to Blåsbo and set up a small range against a derelict house in one of the fields. Mia's dad laid out a small competition target, next to which we arranged several beer cans from Mia's parents 'road-kill' supper a few nights earlier (a deer had been hit on the property a while back, and several of the neighbors helped clean the edible bits while it was still fresh. Mia's mom Annika got loads of the fresh meat and froze it. The sloppier cuts of meat she ground up, and she saved the best bits to roast later. 'Later' was a few nights ago. Mia and I were designated drivers for the evening, and Annika pulled out all the stops to create a remarkable dinner for eight people that lasted well into the next morning. Mia, myself, Lisa (Fisa) and Claes were relegated to the kids table in the kitchen while the adults ate in the dining room. I am now enjoying the leftovers). 

Our shooting range was perhaps 50 meters long, and appeared fantastically longer through the sight of the gun. Börje arranged some quilted blankets in the dirt, using one of the frozen mounds created from plowing the field as a sort of hillside to lay behind and prop the gun (which, with a stock from an 1899 German rifle, is incredibly heavy, weighing about 4-5 kilograms) onto. Our first few shots (the first time I have actually fired an actual gun) were way off the mark, but eventually we started hitting the cans. Everyone took aim at the competition target, and only Mia hit one of the small black bulls-eyes (not the one she was aiming at), but at least we were all on the paper (which was still only about five inches square). Lisa (Fisa) was probably the best shot, having actually done some practice before with air guns. 

Standing to shoot. That was something altogether different. It's all about your stance - hold the trigger in your right hand, with the butt of the gun pressed into your shoulder. Stand with your left leg slightly forward of your right, your knees flexed and your weight on your back foot. Prop our elbow into your left side, setting the gun barrel on your fingertips, and aim down the sight. Just finding the small tin can in the (non-magnified) sight is a task, then releasing the safety and squeezing the trigger without shaking the thing to bits is nigh on impossible. Watching someone else do it is nerve-wracking. I quickly learned to enjoy the laying down method infinitely more, and also wondered how many freaking bullets the military must go through out there running around and trying to hit things (other people).

Then there are the biathletes. Most Americans don't give a damn about the sport anyway, but it's on television often over here, and after Sunday, I have a newfound respect for them. Those targets are so small. The idea of ramping up your heart rate for thirty minutes and then shooting five small targets (and getting punished with extra laps on the skiing course for missing one), is lunacy. It was enough trying not to breathe while laying down, and to think I'd be able to hit the broad side of a barn while standing after having just skied ten kilometers...well, it just wouldn't happen.

I rented Blade Runner from the library today.