In the Clearing

The double-decker bus had wing mirrors that protruded on stalks and between them, above the driver's head, was a row of bug-eyed headlamps, extinguished now at half past seven in the morning. It had been light for five hours. We were driving northwards on a broad, empty road through the forest. Soon everything brightly coloured or square-edged was far behind us. There were no more fields with ripening crops, or any other patches of yellow or red. All I could see were low green and brown hills beneath a huge sky that was blue and purple and grey. When the road passed by the side of lakes the horizon would suddenly recede and then the most distant hills were a deep greeny-grey, as if they were made half of sky and half of forest. This monotony continued; it could have continued for days, since the forest extends unbroken for 500 miles across northern Sweden and Finland. But I climbed off after six hours, in Sorsele, a town on an island in the middle of the Vindelälven river. There are no other towns for fifty miles in any direction, but here there are 1,500 people, two supermarkets, a few shops, a library and a branch of the state-owned off-licence.