It’s the first days of fall but the land does not know it yet. The green and golden hues of summer-strong trees and ripe crops fill the landscape, gently held in place by a warm blue sky, as I drive out of the city, west later to turn north.
A few white clouds play along the horizon and the sun starts sinking to the left in front of me as I move west, out onto the flat land where the glaciers never touched.
Now, if not before, I know instinctively that I am home. This is my land, green topped by blue, no mountains preventing my eyes from roaming far and wide, casing in my field of vision.
All between me and infinity is the ever so gently rounded landscape of endless fields, separated by thick lines of fir trees protecting the crops from the lashings of the unhindered West wind. As the sun sinks lower and turns red, lending its colors to the clouds waiting there, my horizon is reformed by the black outline of trees in the distance, carrying promises of dark woods and the smell of dew fallen. A northern night, always too cool, but still flirtatiously short here on the edge of autumn, sends out tendrils of twilight, dazzling me with promise before slowly dancing closer.
I turn north and the land starts moving. First a few gentle hills, then an abundance of them. The edge of the long-gone glacier clear: Behind me untouched flatness, ahead a well-kneaded landscape of ups and downs, round hills and sharper ones in many sizes. Here and there the occasional granite boulder left as strange and forgotten toys in this bedrock-less land of chalk underground. The people of earlier times used them to build dolmen for their revered dead, today many stand at the entrance to farm roads carrying the name of the farm.
Reaching Skive, passing through it and turning right, never exactly knowing the way, but recognizing it anew each time, I return to the landscape of childhood summers. The secondary road becomes a tertiary, narrowing as I find the right village and turn right towards the fjord (Limfjorden – bisecting Jutland) finally becoming a gravel road on the last kilometer.
Finally I turn on to the grass driveway and park next to the familiar wooden house – though not all familiar, they added a room while I was gone – and am met by well-known faces smiling in welcome.
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