Age needn't be a barrier to the practice and enjoyment of life. On April Fool's Day I set out for Heathrow with Hazel, my 79-year-old friend from school days, and Mike, my 77-year-old husband, to catch a flight to Oslo and then on to Alta in Northern Norway. A three hours' drive in softly-falling snow through breathtakingly beautiful mountains brought us to Hetta, the main village in the province of Enontekio, 300km inside the Arctic Circle and one of Europe's last great wilderness regions.
There we spent ten days on my daughter's husky farm, enjoying all the winter activities on offer to clients in this vast pristine landscape. It was Anna's special treat to mark my 81st birthday. Unlike in the more touristy Lappish destinations further South, the bulk of their clients had ended at the end of March but April, with its long sunny days, is a wonderful month in the far North. It is the month when the locals go out to play.
Having met Simon, Olivia, Chris, George and Dave Watson at the Great Outdoors Show a few days earlier, the subject of Bushcraft Survival Skills was fresh on my mind and I soon found myself living what I had previously been reading about.
Waking up on my birthday, I looked out on deep-blue skies and a vast snow-covered land, glistening in the sunshine. After breakfast we dressed warmly and approached the puppies kennels. Anna's parents-in-law and sister-in-law were there with us, but her husband, Pasi, was in Karelia, taking his final ski-guiding exam. Anna was hoping that he would be home a little more in the future, following a year in which he had attempted to paddle around Spitzbergen for a month and had completed, in two months, the first Finnish unsupported expedition to the South Pole. But she had never been alone on the farm. As well as employing experienced husky guides, the farm has a rotating trainee husky handling programme in operation for anyone keen to volunteer to spend at least a month of their time in the Arctic.
We met the three current guides, Matt and James, childhood friends from the UK who had come out for a last adventure before settling down in London and Sandhurst, respectively, and Lotte, from Belgium, who was thinking about becoming a wilderness guide. Matt was out in the sunshine using a circular saw to make wooden window frames. Lotte was training the pups by skijoring around short loops (skiing whilst being pulled by one or two dogs) and James was preparing the evening food. All were obviously happy in that environment!
The puppies, all 20 of them, had been born in the autumn when Pasi in Antarctica. My eye fell on Arrow - blue eyed, gentle and very pretty. I was thrilled to learn that her mother was Princess, whom I became attached to on my visit in December 2007. Anna lifted the puppies, one by one, out of the cages and attached a lead to each harness. Then off we set, each leading a puppy, one behind the other, on a beautiful nature walk. From time to time we issued commands to the dogs, training them to respond. 'Gee' (turn right), 'Haw' (left) and 'Alas (sit) were soon part of our vocabulary. Arrow was a perfect pupil. The air was so pure and invigorating and the silence across the vast expanse of wilderness so welcome, that I knew my 81st birthday was going to surpass all others.
Soon, I noticed spoor and tracks of reindeer and I thought of Ian Maxwell who had been prominent at the wilderness camp at the Great Outdoors show. I stood, remembering some of the tracking articles in the magazine, as I tried to work out the direction in which the reindeer had been moving. We were in Sami country, where the chief occupation is reindeer husbandry. Everywhere we went we would find tracks and spoor. In the whole province there are more reindeer than people but there are also many wild animals, and even a bear apparently hibernating less than 2km from the farm. I made a note to get a lesson on the various spore (fox, deer, mink etc) from Pasi when he returned since I knew that he runs winter and summer courses for Survival Guild Finland.
Across the road from the husky farm is Minnas Reindeer Farm where we spent our second last morning. Minna keeps 18 two-year-old reindeer on the farm training them to be tame so that she can both open her farm to the public in the winter and use them to pull sleighs for Santa visitors in December. Whilts on the farm, each one is tethered to a tree but they return to their main herd (of 1000 deer) each summer to run wild again. We accompanied her on her mornings feeding. The reindeer are fed a mixture of hay, pellets and sphagnum moss that is collected from the woods in the autumn. Most of the animals we saw had lost their antlers, and were growing new ones. One had come off that morning and she collected the pieces to sell to a local craftsman who would treat them and turn them into ornaments or utensils or tools.
Whole antlers are also in demand. Anna and Pasi had two large antlers that they had been given that needed treatment before they could be displayed since the skull pieces still contained hair that would need to be boiled off. I wasnt too upset that we didnt manage to get to that task.
On Minnas farm, each building was covered in drying skins. She sells them, untreated, (and therefore in a waterproof condition) to local safari companies for about 25 euro each. Other herders soften and treat their skins so that they can be sold as indoor rugs through souvenir shops for around 70 euro. Obviously, however, the reindeer are primarily kept for their meat, and at various times over the 10 days people would use the knives that nearly everyone seemed to carry to cut us slivers from one of the smoked, dried reindeer meat slabs that many also carried around. I found the meat rather strong in flavour and tougher than I like meat to be but it is a local delicacy.
The variety of knives amazed me and, as I studied them in the shops, I thought of Dave Budd. Pasi owns some really beautiful specimens, some hand-carved trophies from various sporting events and others designed for the various tasks that you need different types of knives for when you live constantly in the wilderness. In Lapland, many people carry two knives all the time. The heavier knives are used to cut branches and even small trees for fires and their shorter knife, with a sharper blade, is used for calving kindling, spoons / as a general tool. By carrying the two knives, they can do without carrying an axe with them every time they head out into nature. Every knife had a beautifully carved handle and its own sheath. A small model costs from 26 euros.
On the evening of my birthday we enjoyed a barbecue in a traditional lavu (also known as a kota / tipi) in the middle of the farm. The second lavu, covered with a cloth waste-product from a local paper mill (the fabric upon which the paper rolls, which is replaced sporadically), was a store for the reindeer hides and dog equipment. In our lavu, the dry birch- and pine-wood cut and dried since the previous Spring for both kindling and building material, soon had a huge log fire blazing merrily and we had skewered vegetables and tin-foil 'surprise' packages cooking happily. Hetta is right on the boundary of the treeline. Spruce cease c. 20km South and Pine, c. 20km North after that, there is only arctic tundra interspersed, in the lowlands and some river valleys with some scarce birch.
Had Pasi been there, he would have 'crucified' a salmon - a traditional method of preparation in which the salmon is nailed upright and cooks slowly in the glare of the fire. We will have to return for that. The light came from our Petzl head torches and we sat on wooden benches covered in reindeer hides and drank gloggi (a non-alcoholic version of mulled wine). Matt and James and an earlier intern called JD - had built an igloo close to the lavu. Matt explained that they had built it upwards using a snow box to consolidate the snow before stacking the layers, an adaptation on the traditional method. Hazel and I slept in the igloo that night, toasty and warm in five season Rab and Marmot sleeping bags on top of, and covered, by reindeer skins. What an experience! I woke up in the middle of the night on the cold lower floor, having somehow rolled off my sleeping platform. As I struggled back into position, flakes of ice fell from the wall on to my face! I feel fortunate, in hindsight, that it was -22 degrees Centigrade that night since the structure finally collapsed in the warm days of the following week.
Next time I decided to spend a night in Hetta's magical Ice Castle. The owner opened it for us one evening. It is a magnificent piece of snow architecture, and it lasts through the winter. There are four double bedrooms, a little chapel, a dining-room, sitting room and various other chambers. The owner told us it was built using giant plastic balloons over which the ski slope machines blow their commercially-manufactured snow. The entrance door and the furniture inside are sculpted from blocks of ice that they dig out of the frozen lake. We sat on tree stumps covered with reindeer hide cushions, around the ice block tables and enjoyed hot chocolate and biscuits. At the height of the winter season, guests dine and sleep there. The food is brought in from the hotel across the road. The castle melts in the summer and a new construction is designed each year.
Most days we went out on a husky safari. The sleds were lined up and the huskies were collected, one by one, from their kennels and put in place within the boundaries of the farm. The farm was circled by fencing to ensure that there would be no escapes that could worry the reindeer herders. At each end, there was a huge gate constructed by hand. We learned how to attach the harnesses; this piece over the head and then draw the legs through these straps before attaching to the line! 'What Knot?' I asked, as Anna bade me tie the restraining rope to a post. The modified slip knot didn't look very secure but it certainly withstood a great deal of strain as the huskies barked and jumped in their eagerness to be underway. Anna told me that she had learned, that winter, from another instructor on the Cotswold Winter Skills she had run in the Lyngen Alps in Norway, that the abalakhov anchor an anchor that climbers make by threading tat / rope through triangulated holes formed in ice, by ice-screws, so as to avoid leaving pieces of equipment being them on descents, and attributed to the Russian climber, Abalakhov was, in fact, one of the first anchors used by the inuit to keep dogs teams in place.
Our safaris were over distances of between 15 and 20km, through woods and across frozen lakes and marshes. I usually went with Anna in the front sled with Liz and Princess as our lead dogs. We had a break before returning so that the dogs could rest and we could warm ourselves while enjoying food and hot drinks. Last summer Pasi's parents built themselves a log cabin on a hillside on the far side of the 20km (frozen) lake that Hetta is built beside. There is no electricity available there and, in the summer, the only access is by boat / by a long detour on semi-dry terrain around the lake itself. As with many Finnish holiday homes, it is easier to access in winter by foot, ski, skidoo or dog sledge. We used it as our rest stop most days and one of us would immediately get a log fire going for some cosy light and warmth whilst the others would prepare a snack, collect more wood from the log shed, try their luck fishing through the ice, or keep an eye on the waiting dogs. The toilet building housed a compost toilet which seemed similar to the 'wooden seats over buckets' of my childhood. It was basic in terms of modern comforts but he peace, solitude and beauty that await you are worth the journey.
Our longest safari took us to a remote kota (wooden hexagonal structure) where groups can sleep. There I helped light the big log fire, remembering Dave Watson's instructions! Pasi produced his all-purpose knife and I did what George demonstrated at the Outdoors Show, ie, splitting a log with an axe and then cutting slivers into the smaller pieces to start the fire going. We started with the quick-lighting silver birch logs and then progressed to the slower burning pine. There were logs stacked all around the kota, under the benches. Soon a great fire was blazing. We had used matches to light it, since they argued that there was no point in making normal life harder than necessary. However, I had spotted a firelighter and a small tin of 'Light my Fire' Maya dust in the daypacks, so I guess that they were there for emergencies. Before leaving, we made sure the fire was out and that fresh fire-starting wood was available for the next visitors! Finnish Lapland has a huge network of open cabins maintained and stocked, with wood, by the Ministry of Forestry. Some of them even have beds that can be pre-booked and these certainly make the long wilderness journeys that are common undertakings by Finns, more comfortable.
It was a special thrill for me to drive the huskies. You learn the drill first, under the headings: Starting-point; Turning; Control of speed and stopping; Counter-balance; Ascents and descents. With your feet on the skis and the wind blowing in your face while the eight dogs in your team tear across the snow, you are transported. It is thrilling, exhilarating and you feel free and at one with nature and the history of the far North. Matt and James usually accompanied our dog safari by skidoo, one in front and the other behind, ready to rush to the aid of any driver in trouble. However, we were told that on the longer client journeys with the dogs, the clients generally gained sufficient mastery that they could go into the wilderness unaccompanied.
During one rest period I drove a skidoo on the lake with Anna as in pillion. I found it scarier than driving the huskies since it didn't seem as natural. They are noisy machines and the two stroke versions come with a strong smell of petrol fumes. However, skidoos are a boon for the modern Sami, enabling them to reach the reindeer that can travel vast distances through very remote areas. Their 'traditional' way of life would no longer be possible without this modern machine.
Back on the farm, we spent each afternoon on a 'task of the day' alongside the volunteers; helping them to make puppy name signs for when they would all get their own kennels, burning the bases of the cut trees that would become stakes for the running area in the summer, repairing the running lines etc. Sometimes the volunteer's job was to look after us. One bitterly cold evening Anna dropped Matt, James, Hazel, Michael and me off at the entry to a high ridge between two lakes. We had been there in the Autumn to glory in the fall colours so we knew the area. At the roadside we fitted our snowshoes to our boots, and set off into the woods. Anna said she'd pick us up again in an hour's time. Too slow for the boys, they went ahead to catch the sunset from the ridge, leaving us to the valley. I soon realised that my gloves were insufficient and hot aches started to shoot up and down my arms, making me feel sick to the stomach with the pain. I snapped at my husband and friend to leave me alone, unable to concentrate on anything other than my fingers and blowing life back into them. Everywhere, I could see tracks of reindeer and I longed to catch a glimpse of these elusive creatures. Each painful step brought me back closer to the road and to rescue. A soak in a Jacuzzi and a sauna soon made me forget the cold-inducing pain.
As we packed up to leave by car for Alta on the return journey, I hugged Princess tight, my tears falling on to her soft fur, and I knew that she understood. For ten days I had lived a life of freedom, far removed from all the ugliness and violence of our modern society. I feel privileged to have been part of the wilderness, part of eternity, for ten heavenly days.
You don't mention winter navigation here, and this is the most important thing in Arctic Survival maps are pretty different here and it is hard to match the map to the land in the winter when the marshes and lakes are frozen over and covered by snow. We didn't have any very bad days whilst you were here but for those, when you are out in a white-out, we have the stakes in the snow marking the trails that we use so that we can be guided from one place to another. It is also no surprise that Scandinavians tend to be some of the best orienteers in the world, since the rolling, fairly featureless terrain is as challenging to navigate in, as it comes. You could talk about GPS or not too if you wanted.
The second most important thing here is being able to build a shelter and make a fire. You can always make a shelter from snow no matter where you are, here - but the job is made much easier if you have some kind of shovel with you. You could make a note about this around your igloo notes. An igloo is the most complicated shelter option to make, and it took our inexperienced volunteers 3 weeks of exasperating work - you can much more quickly make quinces / snow-caves / snow-holes (but you can also make an igloo in an afternoon if you put your mind to it and if the snow conditions are suitable).
Making water is then important. to do that, you need to be able to melt the snow (ie make a fire). We always took hot thermos flasks of water with us, and this is something that Scandinavians generally do when heading into the Wilderness, that Brits seldom do. But finding open water here, for 7 months of the year is very difficult so it is a basic survival tool to have hot, warming water readily available.
Travelling safely on ice through the whole winter season (when the ice is thin at the start and end etc) is also important. 95% of the ice surface is safe when moving on ice but you need to be aware of where there might be currents, eg where streams come into the lakes etc, since the ice in those spots can be very thin. Hence, when you were thinking about heading in to town on foot, one day, we tried to explain a few key places to look out for but it would have been quite difficult navigation for you even if you couldn't really 'get lost'.
However, Im ahead of myself, as what I want to do is start at the beginning and share with you my experiences over the past 36 years as mother to the remarkable Anna, who makes an impression on everyone who comes into contact with her. I need to examine my role in forming this young woman who has been described by so many people as a 'one-off'. I am often asked whom did she take after and, hopefully, an answer to that question will become apparent as I write.
At the age of 78 I am known simply as 'Anna's Mum' but there was a time when I had a different identity and was more of a person in my own right.
Before I introduce Anna let me tell you a bit about myself during the 43 years prior to her appearance in my life. I was born in the hunting-lodge on Lord Bessboroughs estate in Southern Ireland on 2nd April 1928 and was christened Patricia Gladys Hartford in the tiny Church of Ireland in Piltown, Co. Kilkenny. My father was the carpenter working on the rebuilding of Bessborough House, which had been burnt down by the IRA in retaliation against Lord Bessborough for his condemnation in the House of Lords of their atrocities. He had been warned not to return to Ireland but after Irish independence the new government undertook the rebuilding of houses like Bessborough.
My parents, too, had been born on estates owned by Anglo-Irish aristocracy. My father had served his apprenticeship under his father on the de Vesci estate in Abbeyleix where his and my mother's maternal grandfather had been the gamekeeper. My parents were first cousins. My mother's father worked as a land steward in Co Wexford for another Anglo-Irish landowner.. Both of my parents were themselves descended from English settlers and, at the time of my birth, were very much part of a small minority in a hostile environment, trying to establish their identity during the early years of Irish independence. I thus grew up in an enclosed society of Protestants, kept strictly apart from the mainstream of Irish life and culture, living like 'a small community of English on Irish soil'. As a result of this I would later suffer from a crisis of identity, asking myself, 'Am I Irish? Am I English? Can I choose which to be? Am I, rather, a member of some kind of non-definable race, Irish by domicile and English in culture and sympathy? I speak with a distinctive Irish brogue but I have lived in England for almost 44 years and no one from my family is to be found in Ireland any more.
Another conflict resulted from living in close proximity to the aristocracy as this gave us a false sense of importance and notions above our station, so to speak. My father spoke with pride of his fathers position as clerk-of-works in Abbeyleix and told us of the time Princess May of Tec visited the de Vescis and admired (coveted?) a bookcase made by my grandfather who then made a replica for her and sent it to Sandringham. We often wonder if this piece of furniture has survived.
He also told us that his father, as an apprentice to his predecessor, helped make the dolls house, which has for years been on display in Longleat, family seat of the Bath family, and is a model of the house that was my grandfathers office on Abbeyleix estate. Several members of my family have been to Longleat and have spoken to the previous Lady Bath who was really interested in learning about the origin of the dolls house.
Having been part of such an interesting era in the history of Englands involvement in Ireland left my family in a kind of limbo when it ended. My father set up business in 1935 as a wood-carver and ecclesiastical woodworker and his beautiful creations in carved Japanese oak grace many Church of Ireland (Anglican) churches in Ireland. Like his father before him he was a perfectionist, a skilled and gifted craftsman. I remember his pride when, as a tribute to his workmanship, he received an invitation to the opening of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral. Regretfully, because of ill health and limited means, he had to decline the invitation.
As for me I wanted something more of life. My dreams went beyond the limitations of the tiny world I was brought up in. From an early age I was a prolific dreamer, an idealist. Being deeply religious as a youngster, I had visions of conquering unexplored lands and claiming them for Christ. When I was older I realised that I had been born into a mans world. At the age of 8 I had within me the seeds of an early feminism. There was my brother, always up to mischief, always in trouble, with no thoughts in his head of wanting to save the world. There I was, carrying within me an urge to be up and doing, achieving fame and setting the world alight, but hampered by being a girl. The Victorian attitude persisted that girls merely needed to learn how to cook and sew, be a good, submissive wife and look after home and children, not at all my idea of what I wanted to do with my life!
I worked hard at my primary school and became one of the lucky few among poorer girls to win a scholarship to boarding school. Yes, there were poor Protestants and my family were among them and war made us poorer than ever as all the commissions from wealthy English people who wished to erect family memorials in Irish Protestant churches were suspended during the war.
It is difficult to imagine now just how poor we were. One day, in particular, stands out in my memory, which illustrates our poverty. There was no food in the house, not even a crust of bread, and 8 people, my parents and six of us children, were hungry. My brother, Ted, was sent on his bicycle to my mother's sister 22 miles away, to ask her for money to buy some food. She was an assistant-matron of Kilkenny Mental Hospital and was unmarried. It was she who bought our shoes and clothes for us over the years, coming by train to visit us each Monday and Thursday, her days off, and bringing with her several bags of 'goodies'.
Ted was away all day and when he arrived home at 7 p.m. he had two shopping bags full of food - bacon, eggs sausages, bread, butter, sugar, tea, jam and much else besides. We were never so glad to see anyone and in next to no time we were all sitting down to the first and only meal that day and eating ravenously. Remembering that period of deprivation, I am smitten with guilt as I think of the amount of food I throw into the rubbish bin these days.
I went on dreaming but, as I grew older, my dreams became less spiritual and more self-orientated. I longed to be a leading philosopher or top financial expert, living in seclusion with my studies or becoming a kind of back-room boffin. I had this great desire to achieve academic excellence, a longing for perfection.
Alas! Dreams shatter. The icy fingers of poverty stretch out and choke them before they can become reality. The necessity to earn a living, to lift oneself out of the degrading and energy-sapping trap of poverty begins to dominate. Resentment and rebellion take root.
Instead of doing what I really wanted, studying Mathematics and Philosophy at university, I found myself destined to go to college and be trained as a teacher, to me a loathsome career and one I wouldn't recommend to my worst enemy. All of this would be financed by a government loan, to be paid back out of my salary over the first 5 years of earning, a millstone around my neck. These loans were available only to extremely needy students training as teachers for church primary schools, in my case, the tiny Church of Ireland schools.
As Protestants, we had our own schools, training colleges and university. We had the added privilege, moreover, of studying for half a BA pass degree in Trinity College, Dublin, as the academic part of our course. We could complete the degree as external students if we could afford the extra two years fees. I did this four years later, but my degree, gained in 1953 and without much effort on my part, was a poor substitute for the Honours I had dreamed about. I remember reading Matthew Arnold's poem, 'The Scholar Gypsy', and longing to go as a student to Oxford.
I fought in vain against the plans for my future. Tears and pleading had no effect and then I asked to be allowed to join the WRAAF just to escape from what I saw as a hideous future, but to no avail. My intellectual yearnings were thus stifled and my faith grew less invincible as I became more and more rebellious and resentful.
Many years later, I would preach a new doctrine to friends, that God was a being created in the image of Man, by Man, for Man, to justify Man's dominance over Woman. I grew to resent the unhappiness and squalor at home and my mother's sad miserable life as a second-class citizen. A suppressed anger against my father and against male-dominated society in general, built up inside me.
My dream became a determination to prove that women are not just as good as men but superior in every aspect. I also carried about with me a huge chip on my shoulder and an angry resentment of the degrading stigma of poverty. All through college I was sullen and uncooperative and I let my brain go idle. I can sometimes detect a similar sullenness in my daughter if she doesnt get her own way! I didn't want to be like that. I craved to be perfect in every aspect.
Looking back, I can see that those two years were, for me, an utter waste but the certificate I received enabled me to take up a teaching post and earn a salary, albeit a very small amount at first. However, the years passed and I made the best of them. I was in my late twenties before I had any money to spare to spend on clothes and on travel.
I married at the age of 31 and choosing an Irish Catholic added to the contradictions in my life. It brought ostracism from one family but not acceptance by the other. I sometimes felt I was living in 'no-man's land'. When Mike and I came to England in 1963, I began, not only to enjoy teaching for the first time, but also to feel I'd come home. My mother died the next year and my father then settled in England, staying with each of his children and his sister, my Aunt Frances, in turn. When he died in 1966, he was buried with my mother in Abbeyleix.
Eleven years after our marriage, my husband, Mike, and I were aware that the years were closing in around us. I was 42 and he was 39, and we were childless. We decided to contact an adoption society but were rejected. We guessed it was because of our age. We tried another society and to our surprise we were accepted. Nine months' waiting helped to create a sense of natural birth.
I spent those months preparing for the arrival of my expected daughter, joining other expectant mothers at antenatal classes, even doing relaxation exercises with them. My daughter's arrival would be as near a natural birth as I could make it! From the word 'go' she would have everything I had longed for but couldn't have. She would never suffer the mortification of poverty. Instead, she would be showered with love and she would be the centre of my world. Nothing but the best would be good enough for her. Let's see how it all turned out!