Uncharted Viking Territory.

The entirety of my time here is dominated by one longing...
to see a wild moose!

After our trip to Norway, and being mercilessly taunted by hundreds of 'moose crossing' signs, I ask everyone I encounter where I might find one.

BUT...
there is PLENTY to distract me here...

I think if there's any country that will lead to my total demise, it's Sweden.

I'm lost in a sea of ice blue eyes and that just so happens to by my kyponite.
Also it doesn't help that, to quote Usher;

"Honey got a booty. Like pow, pow, pow. Honey got some boobies. Like wow. Oh wow."

I've been spending most of my time roaming around the country side after some unexpected car trouble landed us near Rickard's childhood home. About 10 minutes from the town of Säffle.

I instantly wish I'd grown up here because there really is NOTHING quite like the Swedish country side. We spend most of our days roaming from lake to lake and forest to forest, listening to old school dance music like Michael Jackson's Dance Machine. 

I can't quite capture it with my camera but when it's overcast the skies open up just enough to let the light shine onto the wheat fields and they almost look alive with a stunning saffron glow.

Four days in and still no moose.

It's cold here but Rick's parents house is sweet and warm, regardless of the temperature. 

In the morning, I layer up and go for a walk, "sometimes we persure the call into the forest, looking for it, as though it were a tangible thing."

I can actually see the season changing. I think only of how badly I'd want to see this place in the spring or deep winter.

I remember stumbling upon an opening in the trees and just see yellow. Yellow all the way to the horizon. I feel so full of life and energy.

I bound around the field like a puppy.
Excited, exhilarated, free. It doesn't matter what I do, or how loudly I chuckle to myself there's no one around. I don't think you can get that kind of freedom in the city.

I don't think you can get that kind of freedom anywhere without making a lot of sacrifices.

Just when I decide the world is sweet,

when I decide I'm invincible,

I realise...

the field is COVERED in bees!

So I put my tail between my legs and bound the heck out of there. I'm pretty sure that's just natures way of bitch slapping me back into my place.

People here have genuine love for their country. They never complain that everything is highly taxed, (to the point where a McDonald's burger costs about $13) because they know that their tax money goes straight back to them.
It goes towards their free health care system, free education, free medicine, free media, free universities.

Apart from my new perspective on nature, Sweden has given me so much;

My first home cooked meal in nearly four weeks,

My first petrifying right sided driving experience,

My first, very failed attempt at commandeering a viking ship,

and finally

My first wild moose sighting;

Sweden even throws in a family of wild deer for good measure (left, near the woods).

It's just one of those rare things in life, where your expectations are not only met but they're actually exceeded. Something that just doesn't happen often enough for anyone.

I can very easily picture myself living out the remainder of my days here.
Happiness surrounding me in a small red wooden house, drinking whisky and reading a leather bound book by an open roaring fire.

I'm sure the love of my life is in Sweden.

But that's the bitter-sweetness of traveling. It's flirting with life. Lisa St. Aubin de Teran put it best when she said it's like saying "I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station."

So I kiss the forest green and amber fields, the roaring open fire, those I've come to love and all the promises of my life here goodbye and risk that I'm looking in on the good life, I might be doomed never to find.