Elsa’s Song, Dec 14th 2021

The call of the first starling braided itself through the air. The clouds vanished. The bright winter sun creating diamond crust on the ground.

Ricky and Nejla were busy getting the sleds ready for the trip. The Crew were eager to get going. The five older huskies pulling Ricky and Luca’s sled sparkled with anticipation. The group of starlings were belting out their regular lunch serenade right after the morning one. They just kept on going.

“Gorgeous!” Nejla could not help herself. She just had to yell it out. “Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!”

“Oh, yes!” Ricky sounded in. “Gorgeously freaking gorgeous!

Luca the Lab was getting comfortable in Ricky’s sled. Nejla tied the cargo basket closed. It was filled with food for The Crew, her own provisions, backpack and all the regular long distance mushing gear.

Both Ricky and Nejla had inherited their sleds when Ricky’s grandfather and Nejla’s uncle passed. He’d been the most renowned musher and sled-maker in the country. Everyone who were serious about the art of mushing came to grandpa and uncle Ford to learn how to work with “these gentle souls with fierce clarity” as he’d called called “the polar breeds”. The sleds he built were known to be strong, fast and flexible.

Ford had told both Nejla and Ricky that his grandfather’s grandfather had actually learned how to build the sleds from the trolls and the pixies. The fairies and the alves had then taught him how to create the lines. Every sled made had its own Nisse appointed to look after both sled, dogs, food, human connection and more.

A faint sound of “swish, swish” in the snow made Nejla turn her head. A little black cat looked her straight in the eyes. A moment later she graciously jumped over the handle bar and placed herself on top of the cargo basket.

“It’s obvious she’s joining”, Ricky laughed.

It took less than a minute for the cat to make herself comfortable.

“And who are you?” Nejla asked.

“Maddy the Mighty”, the cat replied. “You know you ain’t gonna connect to any dragons with just them dogs. And you know you need dragons! It ain’t gonna work without dragons. So who’d you gonna call? Cat Kingdom! And I’m your representative. Pleasure to connect”.

Cecilia Götherström, December 14th 2021  

Elsa’s Song,  Dec 4th 2021

I see the wilderness in your eyes.

Those yellow-brown soul portals watching me closely through your thick, white eyelashes.

A communication which cannot be misunderstood.

The wilderness is not savage. It is the one true connection. You might actually call it The One True Love.
What I see in you is what I am, what you are, what we all are. Together.

Wilderness.

Lost touch with our own innate wilderness, many of us have. Feeling lost not because comfort is missing, but because the direct contact with the elements have gone astray. 


Cold cheeks in winter, warm feet in summer, inhaling humid earth scent in spring, walking among crisp colours in autumn.

“Your serenades in the heart are the roadmap.You love the cold. Embrace that.” Elsa speaks to me.” 

“Uncover! Uncover! Uncover! Be!”“ may very well be followed by “Embrace! Embrace! Embrace! Be!” “ she continues.

As always, she is right. Even though there is no wrong or right. 

Asking her, she nods. She tells me to stop using those two words. She is shaking the box of words, letting many fall out through holes in the bottom, allowing space for new words to tumble in from the magic energy of this season.

“Alignment”, she says. “Choose “alignment” as your word. Then “right” and “wrong” have no charge anymore.”

Alignment.

Uncover! Uncover! Uncover! Be!
Embrace! Embrace! Embrace! Align!

Here, there and everywhere.



Cecilia Götherström, Dec 4th 2021

Elsa’s Song, Dec 2nd 2021

“ In a gentle way you can shake the world”

Mahatma Gandhi

The darkness of the winter morning holds a cocoon. Nejla embraces the coolness of the bedroom air mixed with the warm welcoming of her worn out snowboard-socks.

Minutes later, cup of warm team with milk and honey in hand, her mother’s knitted scarf wrapped around her waist and another one around her shoulders, she is in the garden. Inhaling the new day. It is ceremony time.

The morning star is not alone in the sky this time of the year. You could say there’s a family, even a tribe of a truly interconnected web of morning stars. One shining brighter than the next, yet noone stealing the light from the other. Every single light source enhancing each other. Every breath a pulsation of light against the soft darkness of the multiverse.

“There are stars which are no stars, and there are skies which are no skies. There are no terms and conditions on creation. Just because we have named something from our perspective, looking in one direction, does not mean that is the way it is.”, Nejla spoke, pondering, to the winter air.

“What would it take to be a sadhu?” Nejla thought to herself. “What would it take to be a choice. A choice to just experience the here and now? To stop, to stay, to watch through the veils. Noticing that sometimes they are sturdy blinds and other times the velis dissipate in front of your eyes as you observe them? To be someone not going anywhere physically and ambitionally all the time, but expanding from within?”

“It would only take that. A choice. The choice. You see, magic is a choice too.” 

The voice seemed to come from the winter breeze. In the shifting light of the morning sun approaching from the east and the dense snow clouds moving in from the north a little sparkle started to manifest right in front of her eyes.

December 2nd 2021, Cecilia Götherström