'Walden'
Thoughts about nature, hiking,time and solitude.

To get into motion from within, the outside must move too.
The long, solitary hikes not only change my sense of time, they also make me more receptive, softer…
The repetitive routes become ingrained; gradually I start to fathom my new surroundings.
During my hikes I breathe, feel, smell and listen; nature thus becomes my travel companion, whispering into my ear.
Sit down and let me tell you all about it.

My work for the final exhibition of the ArtSwap project; Angle of Incidence is based on the hikes around Rovaniemi. The spoken text of the audio installation 'Walden' is listed below.

The woods…

How different the trees are here…
A tree is a ‘cavity’ through which life is transported: sap stream, vigour and energy, intended for branches, roots, leaves and fruits.
But here, the trees do not have the thick branches and wide canopies they have at home.The branches of the broad-leaved trees are much thinner, pointing up almost immediately, unless they bend under the weight of snow, sometimes their trunks included.
I am fascinated with the birch woods I constantly pass by along roads and rivers. The skin of the trunks seems to be open, their branches reaching toward the light. The cavities through which life is transported lie within the trunks, opening themselves to absorb everything there is of life, air and light, defying cold and snow.
To me, it looks almost painfully vulnerable: tender skin adapting to the growth from within, where a new, pink skin has already formed.
Nature shows itself in its vulnerability and autonomy. It does not need us: if we leave it in peace it will heal itself. In nature, cruelty and vulnerability are equals.

The rivers…

To get into motion from within, the outside must move too…
Walking over frozen, wide rivers becomes tiresome after a while, but it also makes me more receptive, softer: humility, as if I better understand my own place and have peace with this. My senses focus on nature as a travel companion, and it seems to accept my presence. I notice I am listening, feeling, adapting to what I encounter but at the same time ensuring I am safe.
Occasionally, I hear a subterranean ‘pllooink, pllooink’ underneath the ice.
It is a deep sound, as if a beast lives there that turns around and makes itself heard because someone is walking over its back. A wonderful sound that I remember from skating: it doesn’t frighten me. The ice is thick and solid and except for the stretches below the bridges I can walk endless distances without getting lost. This way, I can experience the desolate beauty of the open wide expanse that lies before me, absorb its emptiness.

When I get tired and realize that I will have to walk the same stretch all the way back, I start singing a children’s song softly to myself. It helps: after all, my desire to walk all the way to the horizon was a child’s longing too.

The city

As soon as I re-enter Rovaniemi along the busy approach and exit roads and across the bridges, I shut myself off from my surroundings. After all, a thin skin is unable to cope with the violence of high-speed traffic, the hardness of the asphalt and the huge amounts of concrete and stone. It starts with the first buildings: as if I feel the need to protect myself before I participate in traffic and mix in with the crowds in the streets. There are so many stimuli I want to shut out: noise, ugliness, commerce… All these things that scream for attention make that I cannot listen anymore.
The quiet flowing of time is disturbed and a large part of my childlike openness and freedom of thought is erased. It is here, in the city, that I start experiencing a kind of loneliness.
This does not prevent me, in my role of outsider, from being curious for the habitat of my fellow men. In the quieter suburbs this curiosity is stronger than among the shops and public buildings in the city centre. In the centre of the city I am not a voyeur, just an anonymous stroller. After all, everybody is underway there, as I am on my way to the safety of Maria’s apartment, where I feel comfortable and can be on my own.

 ©Ank van Engelen

The title 'Walden' is not only inspired by the novel of the same name by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), but also on a work of the Scandinavian composer Hans Abrahamsen
Almost every evening in Rovaniemi I listened to this music, in the version of the Asko/Schonberg Ensemble, the Calefax Reed Quintet and Reinbert de Leeuw,  .