Syndin. One week of cabin life.

When you live in a cabin in the woods, everything is real — the clouds, the marsh, the planks of wood waiting to be nailed on the floor and the terrace, the candles, the smell of cows from the neighboring farm, the sound of a sheep bell, the smell of burnt wood in the oven.

T’s family’s cabin is in Syndin. By car, it takes 20 minutes from neighboring town Ryfoss. T’s mother comes from Ryfoss. There are seven siblings in her family and they own cabins in a strip of land in Syndin that runs from the other side of the lake down to where T’s mother’s cabin stands. This is my third visit to Syndin, but this visit is the longest. One week without the buzz of the metropolitan gives me enough time to learn some more family stories from this side of the family. The cabin holds a lot of T’s childhood memories, from the piece of twig sticking out from the wall to help tell how cold the wind is to the insides of the drawers with several hand-made toys fashioned from the imagination of the then younger T and what materials you can get surrounding the cabin.

T is older now, married and finishing a degree in psychology. This time, he doesn’t spend his time making toys; he fixes the roof where the gas-powered generator is housed; he digs out stones to make a pond.