What do you think if we’d rent a house by the lake Puruvesi and see how it feels like to live in a house in the countryside?
My husband asked me that question one summer day on our boat last July. The girls were having their afternoon nap on the cabin and me and my husband were having coffee together.
What a great idea! Let´s do that! was my spontaneous answer. Girls aren’t going to school any time soon. Now is the perfect time! I continued.
We had just talked how we enjoy living in our boat during the summertime. How we had noticed that we feel physically and mentally better when our days are filled with simplicity and nature. The town has begun to mean us less and less.
So, wouldn´t it be better to live in a place where all the things that are meaningful for us are close to us?
We had also noticed that we need less to be happy. We don’t want more quantity to our family life, we wanted more quality. All that we want is to live simply good life together.
We certainly don´t want to be someday +60 and say “We should have done it back then.“. We want to be a couple +30 who has the courage to trust our intuition and do that what our hearts have to say.
BUT. My husband has never lived in the countryside. He has no experience what it’s like to live the long and dark Finnish winter without street lights. He is skilled ex-scout and his hobbies have taken him to nature for whole his life. But that´s still far from living everyday life in the countryside. A place where the nearest grocery (and street light) is 15 km away from home.
And me. Well, I´ve lived in the countryside for the first 16 years of my life. I know how deep the darkness can be there. But living in the countryside as a child is a quite different thing than to live there as a working mother of two small children. I don´t know how does it feel to take your sick child to emergency duty 40 km away.
Besides, we love our colorful town home. It´s big enough for us and it´s easy to live there. Everything is close. It wouldn´t be wise to make too big and radical decisions based on too romantic views about the simple life close to nature.
A realistic view about living in a house by lake in the Finnish countryside. That´s what we want to have. An experience that gives us enough knowledge to decide is a house in the countryside or an apartment building the right place for us and our wellbeing.
Things move forward when you work for them. In autumn we started to search for the right house to rent.
In January in our friends` wedding I realized that our other friend, quest at the wedding too, owns a cottage by the lake Puruvesi near my parents´ farm. Why not give it a shot and ask? I thought.
We found a perfect match. A cottage that was empty during the winter. A cottage that fits perfectly to our plans. And our plans fit perfectly to our friend´s plans.
So here we are. Visiting our future home. Me and my husband having coffee together. On the steps of the cottage that will be our family´s home from the beginning of next September till the end of May 2015.
After coffee my husband continued his wood cutting. I smiled when I saw him looking at the birches. I sensed how happy he is doing physical work.
While my husband worked in the forest I walked around the cottage. I went to photograph our home road to be, sat next to the smoke sauna, imagined our girls swimming in the lake, planned how I would photograph the cottage and its surroundings for you.
I thought, how lucky I am.
And how life can be amazing. You just need to give it a chance to be amazing.
When I look at this last photo I feel calm and relaxed. Excited too, but in a good way. I feel ready to take the next step in my and our family´s life. I know it will include a lot of challenges and surprises that are not only positive ones. But even so I feel calm and confident. This will be a good thing for us. I know it will.
That’s the view from our kitchen and living room next autumn. It is the view that I’m going to see while doing my yoga practice on our porch next September.
For some it’s a boring view. For me it’s a soulscape. A view that is a symbol of simply good life. A symbol of my dream.
