The Quietest Place

It took a while to get to Ingatorp (SFO - AMS - CPH, train to Malmo, then four hours in a car.) After just a few days, I didn’t want to leave.

Ingatorp is a small town in the middle of Sweden, in the forest. It isn’t close to anything. Just lush rolling hills, clean, crisp lakes, clear skies with white, fluffy clouds passing by.

It is the birthplace of a dear friend. A seriously smart Swede with a penchant for computing who now lives his life in the heart of Silicon Valley. But this is where he is from and this is what I see first when I think of him.

Calm, quiet, peaceful.

Marissa and I stayed in his grandparents’ house. They are gone, but memories live on in every photograph adorning the walls, mantle and tables. Grandsons, granddaughters, grandparents, siblings, a visual history of 20th century Sweden, on display in a tidy little house on a tidy little street in Ingatorp.

When we turned off the lights to get into bed, it was quieter than I had remembered how quiet the world can get. No airplanes, no cars, no air conditioning, no televisions, no sound at all.

One might think all that quiet would be unnerving. It wasn’t. Once the ringing in my ears and the buzzing in my brain - caused by over-stimulation and self-induced stress - went away, the quiet was comforting.

The quiet lasted the whole time we were there. We were cradled in quiet, all day and all night. It was beautiful.

We spent one afternoon foraging for Chanterelles.

Another we went fishing.

Yet another we had a tournament of yard games - croquet, darts and a Swedish game call Kubb.

It was just the six of us: two couples and his parents. Out in the late summer sun, breathing the cleanest air possible, laughing and playing. Just being with people we care about and who care for us and otherwise with no care in the world.

One incident hit home for me in the funniest and sweetest way possible. My friend is a very cautious driver. And that is when he does drive. He’d prefer not to. But when he does he goes quite slowly, obeys all of the rules all of the time, and is very careful.

It isn’t out of fear. It is a mixture of caution and a love of rules.

But I think genetics also plays a role. Case in point, his father was driving the three of us to meet the women of our party at a lake. We came to a three-way intersection, where we were to take a left. The road - to the right and the to the left - stretched out in a slow curve over at least half a mile.

Visibility was good. We could see that the nearest cars heading in our direction were beyond the half-mile of that slow curve. They were not going to be at our intersection for a long time. We had way more than enough time to make our left turn.

I could argue we had enough time to circumnavigate the entire intersection, twice, before those cars arrived.

We didn’t.

We waited.

The cars approached from the distance, slowly. Over what felt like hours, father and son watched the cars come. Sitting in the back seat, I watched the two of them, in wonder at what was taking place.

I suppressed a grin, as I did not want to break the silent, solemn agreement happening in the front. We had to wait for oncoming traffic to pass. We just had to wait for it to pass. Even if it wasn’t going to pass until tomorrow. We were going to wait.

The first passed.

A while later, so did the second.

The third and final car - I am pretty sure the only car within miles at that point - passed through the intersection. We finally took our left turn.

I’ve laughed about this a few times since. I’ve also begun to appreciate it more and to realize I could learn from it. We were in this peaceful, verdant place. We had no obligations and no needs. Why should we hurry? What was that going to do for us? And why should we take a risk - even a tiny one - when we didn’t need to?

It also made me realize that sometimes - many times - we have to move on. We leave the place we love because, in the end, our potential takes us elsewhere.

But moving on doesn’t necessarily mean leaving behind. Moving on can mean bringing with. So while we can’t physically be in two places at once, we can, and almost always do, bring with us where we are from.

The day we left - driving from Ingatorp to Bovallstrand on the West Coast - we stopped at the church where our friends had been married. Modern Sweden is a very secular country, but the church still has a role to fill. It is still a part of and reflects its community.

The church at Ingatorp reflects its community well. Both have been around for centuries. Current generations don’t see or depend on them the same way their ancestors had - many leaving for more opportunity elsewhere - but they respect them just the same.

Like its church, Ingatorp could be said to be a bit old fashioned. Also like its church, it is very well maintained. It is welcoming. It is lovely.

And it is beautifully, peacefully, blissfully quiet.