The Gulf of Finland on Ice July 29, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Cars, Destination, Estonia, Finland, Flight Schedule, Sightseeing, Trails , trackbackPerhaps they’re penguins, I thought. But they were too far away for me to be certain, and the blinding light could have been playing tricks on the two of us. It doesn’t help your orientation one bit when the land is indistinguishable from the sky, nor indeed when you’re not quite sure whether you’ve left the land yet. Very soon we would not be able to see the line of tall evergreens that parted beach from cloud.
Our penguins remained elusively in the distance, though motionless. Underfoot the ice creaked and groaned dubiously: we were over the sea. An earlier wind had whipped up the surface snow into rivulets like tiny mountain ranges, and whirled spirals like ice cream from a machine. Beneath this the layer of ice was almost perfectly smooth, though occasionally an unseen force had pushed its plates together and upwards forming huge mountains amongst the hills and valleys. Every detail was spectacular, yet the whole formed a nothingness of intense light and cold (about twenty degrees below zero). We could only lock our vision onto those distant penguins and attempt to get that far.
In places the ice seemed to be frighteningly thin, and our boots turned it mushy as seeping salt water formed lakes in the snow-vales. The air, heavy with silent, still flakes, closed in behind us making our isolation almost absolute. The quietness seemed somehow to be incredibly loud, perhaps because wherever else I have been I could at the very least, listening hard, pick out some distant sounds of life, or even the wind in the trees. But here we were truly in a void; our footsteps had a booming, dull thud to them, and standing still with breath held left our ears desperately searching for something, anything, to catch hold of.
My senses were confused by this new experience, having previously associated sightseeing with sights to see, not to mention hear and smell. To keep my mind in check I decided to remember the journey here (a cavernous train with wooden seats) or the flight to Riga (alarmingly, the roof leaked), but I couldn’t help falling into the mental freeform that this placed allowed. Here was somewhere in a meditative limbo between earthly chaos and spiritual ecstasy; we could have been on the crystal lake of the Apocalypse, half-way to paradise. . . If only it wasn’t for the cold that nagged at us constantly. My feet had ceased diplomatic relations with the rest of me.
Our penguins held fishing rods and wore hats and coats of thick fur: they were humans — nay, Russians. I expect we were about three miles out to sea by now, though I could not smell any salt, hear any gulls or see any boats. The over-swaddled Russians had built curved walls of ice around themselves and drilled small holes through to the sea, over which they crouched with their fishing tackle, perfectly still. Some of them had faces: red-raw and wrinkled, with tiny eyes and pursed lips. Their breath hung about them indecisively. They looked — and there’s no getting away from this — infinitely bored.
One of them gesticulated to us and, using harsh, staccato Russian (which neither of us understood) and rather violent stabs into the air, made it very clear that we had taken a dangerous route over the ice and that we were very stupid indeed. We noticed now a trail of well- trodden snow winding back towards the shore, obviously a route known to be safe by the experienced locals. We smiled feebly and refrained from attempting any further communication with these introspective folk. They eyed us with vague curiosity and then returned to their (apparently fruitless) fishing. My friend and I settled ourselves onto the snow and uncorked a well-chilled bottle of wine in the hope of getting merry.
In a most oblique way this place was very exciting; the searing blanket whiteness was stunning and the sheer starkness ultimately beautiful. But it was not merry. We had to get up and gingerly stamp around to recirculate the blood. For an hour or two we trudged about trying to find something more (or something at all) to see, and even photograph. Finally, frozen stiff, we made our way back along the relative safety of the fisherman’s path, with a cursory wave back to the huddled forms.
Ahead of us the tall pines that stretch out across the frozen plain of Estonia distinguished themselves from the snow-coated sky and earth. It seemed that the all-pervading light was weakening: it must have been late afternoon. This presented a thought that made me shudder with fright: this awesome, eerie world-apart in the dead of night, unbearably cold, no moon or stars, merely the moan of the mysterious gods beneath the ice . . . We hurried on.
What spirits lurked within the murkiness of the intertwined creepers of the forest? Such a dense blackness, and unreal noises . . . Oh, it wasn’t like this at all, I’m sure, yet the shape silhouetted in the snow where the ice met the beach turned into our worst fears.
He was dead, there’s no doubt about that. He was lying, clothed, on his back, legs apart, elbows resting in the snow with his arms inexplicably pointing straight upwards ending with contorted, blue fingers, like a pair of old, gnarled trees.
My heart gave me an unforgettable jolt when I thought him to be headless; yet there was no blood staining the fresh, even snow. Perhaps it was tucked under his collar. We were speechless, but we morbidly crept towards him when a sudden snap from the forest warned that someone was approaching and we ran along the beach then through the trees, hearts pounding, and gasping for breath. Never has fear gripped me so tightly, yet it was exhilarating, fantastic even. There was a schoolboy excitement about it, but weighed down by the heavy, weird atmosphere of the frozen Gulf. During the terrible siege of Leningrad in the last war supplies were eventually conveyed to the starving thousands on carts from Finland across the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland (it was fortunately an exceptionally cold winter) — what must have been a fearsome journey. Now history is swathed in an inscrutable silence.
At the comparative safety of a deserted road we collected ourselves a little and then headed for the station, trying hard to chuckle about it all, though obviously we had both been deeply affected.
The final straw, as it were, came when we were back home: none of the photographs we had taken on that day came out.
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