Summer cottage - zen

My favourite place in the world is my family's summer cottage. 

Our summer cottage is situated on an island in the lake Kallavesi, in Kuopio. The island is called Saunasaari, which is quite a quintessential island name. In Kallavesi alone there are at least three different islands called Saunasaari. No wonder, cause going to the sauna truly is one of the best elements of cottage life.

Our summer cottage was built by my grandfather, and it consists of one room (serving as a kitchen/dining-/living- and bedroom) and a sauna. There is a separate building, that my dad built when I was a child, with one room that serves as extra sleeping quarters. The toilet is an outhouse. The cottage has electricity, but no water, so we always bring a couple of canisters of fresh water for drinking from land. The summer cottage life brings back to basics: Life is just about eating, sleeping, going to the sauna  and swimming. 

The cottage building is built in the 1960s, and has one room and a sauna: all the essentials.

The additional sleeping space built in the early 2000s.

Some people like their cottage life busy and full of all sorts of handy work. My father is partly like that, but he usually likes doing stuff around the cottage by himself. The rest of us can live with the bare minimum of daily duties that sustain the simple summer cottage life. 

Of course, to maintain the simplicity of cottage life requires a bit of effort. The main task of the day is heating the sauna. Heating the sauna is quite a therapeutic exercise in itself. It requires manual labour, as the firewood needs to be brought and the water for bathing needs to be carried from the lake. A family will wash with about 15-20 bucket fulls of water. The water needs to be brought in before the sauna is heated, so that it can warm as well. Then there is the task of actually lighting the fire. You can do it the old fashioned way with matches and tinder and lots of patience. Lighting a fire can be a frustratingly long process, and if you want an easier option you can use a special fluid to help light the fire instantly. At our cottage my parents have latelty lent towards using a lighter fluid. I love looking at the flames. The fire somehow connects to the generations that have come before us. There is some eternal magical power in the dance of the flames. 

No matter how you light the fire, you still have to feed it with firewood for at least an hour to get the temperature warm enough to bathe in. Once the sauna is heated to around 60 degrees Celsius it is time to bathe. Bathing is usually a long process that will involve plenty of trips to take a dip in the lake. Swimming against the sunset is such an amazing feeling. You feel truly blessed. 

As well as heating the sauna most other daily activities are linked with food. Cooking food, making tea, and doing the dishes are a calming routine of cottage life. Our kitchen facilities are of course more limited than at home, but somehow there is still a good variety of options for cooking. The main room of the cottage has a small kitchen area. We used to have a fire burning stove, but it was used so rarely that it has been removed since the arrival of electricity and a mini stove/oven combination. Before electricity we used to cook mainly with gas, and our refrigerator was started with gas as well. The first thing we had to do when we arrived at the cottage, was to light the gas for the refrigerator, but alas those days are gone, as we now have a fully electric fridge.

On sunny days we will typically take the grill out and barbecue food outside. Some of our favourites are stuffed peppers or mushrooms wrapped in bacon. I eat mostly vegetarian food, but I absolutely love bacon wrapped mushrooms, so I make an exception with those. My dad will cook a sausage or two too. 

If we still want some food in the evening we might also wrap some potatoes, vegetables and sausages in cooking tin foil and put the food to cook on top of the sauna stones. 

Cottage food is always not so fancy. We eat a lot of ready meals and easy to cook food too, but everything tastes better in a beautiful environment after a day spent outside. 

Cottage life also wouldn't be cottage life without the good stuff. Biscuits, sweets and sauna drinks are part of the experience. Also just cutting up some juicy watermelon to bite at on a warm summer day is heavenly. When I was little one summer someone was selling ice cream of their boat. It was the coolest thing, because we never brought any ice cream to the cottage as it would melt on the way. (Feel free to use that as inspiration to start a thriving ice cream boat business next summer and keep me posted.) Sadly the people selling ice cream never came back with their boat after that one summer. For years I used to dream of eating ice cream at the summer cottage until this summer me and my dad just decided to buy some on a trip to the grocery store. We bought simple vanilla ice cream and I was praying that it would be edible at home after a 30 minute trip back to the cottage. When we arrived, it was still cold just perfectly melting on the sides. It was the best vanilla ice cream I have eaten!

After all the eating someone still has to do the dishes. We wash our dishes with water from the lake, but make sure to dispose of it on land. Washing up liquid should be nature-friendly as the water can not be processed before disposing of it. The fact that we take water from the lake might sound weird for some of you, but we are so used to it and it's never made any one of us sick. It is quite a common practise at Finnish summer cottages.

Ice cream is a rare delicacy on an island

The kitchen area is compact but has all you need.

When in doubt, make tortillas. 

Watermelon is refreshing in the hot Finnish summer

Running out of water, means a trip to mainland is needed.

"Look, it's our apple" sighed the proud pine trees.

Other great activities for time at the summer cottage are: 

Reading: This summer I finally grabbed a book, Fred Vargas' The Poison will remain (Kalmankuoriaiset), and got into the thrill of reading again. I got so immersed in the book that I had to steal in from my mother to finish it back home in Helsinki (even though it was a library book she was still in the middle of reading). I have also finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at the summer cottage. I remember crying my eyes red, but not being able to tell anyone what happens, because I was the first one to finish the book as it had just come out.

When you get hooked to the book, you have to take it with you.

Watching Nature: Being surrounded by beautiful nature is one of the special things about having a summer cottage in Finland. A mother duck teaching her kids jumping of the jetty is an increadible joy to notice. Sometimes I make trips to the forest, to look at plants and just sense the light being sieved through the branches of the trees. The sounds of birds and occasional small animals give clues to the rich life that goes around us. Being in the nature has also inspired me to do a lot of photography. Sunsets are especially magical, as the sky changes all the time. 

Just chilling out: One of the best memories that I have is on one midsummer, when I was lying at the hammock, looking up at the tall trees and the sky above. Suddenly I felt a great sense of happiness and a feeling of connection to the world. I shouted up to the sky my midsummer greeting: "Hyvää juhannusta!" And a few seconds later, to my suprise I heard a cheery reply from another island wishing me a happy midsummer. At that moment I felt the summer cottage zen. I was happy. 

The summer cottage has been put into winter season now, and it will be opened for new adventures probably in May. Just looking at the pictures from this summer has made me smile. Now that I am stuck to my home and it's damp and dark outside it's nice to remember the beautiful moments of the summer. 

Have you ever tried cottage life? Do you love it or hate it?