In my mind I’ve got a personalized box of 64-count Crayola crayons, complete with that unsatisfying sharpener on the reverse side. And as I go through life, I’ve made a habit of rearranging the colors, taking some out and adding some in, depending on exactly what’s going on during any given year.

Last weekend I discovered what will become a permanent fixture in my collection. It was a shade that I struck upon while gazing into the clearest sky in a place located some 1,800 kilometers northeast of here. For lack of creativity, I’ll call the color I saw a Finnish blue.

If you’re familiar with the siniristilippu, then you have an idea of what I’m talking about. The flag of Finland has a white background, but the Nordic cross is cast across it with a grade of blue that serves as a sharp contrast in tones. Before I came to Finland, this flag always conjured visions of an ice-crusted landmass with either too much or too little sun, depending on the time of year. Finnish blue was limited to what I saw in this rectangle: a country of perhaps uninviting extremes.

But I’d never been to Finland, and indeed it was over two decades before I finally made good on a promise to go. For this initial foray I went on a short visit, and I did so in order to link back up with an old friend…while along the way hopefully getting a taste of her country’s culture.

Some might think that maintaining limited contact over 20+ years might no longer qualify two people as friends— never mind contemplate buying a ticket to go and pay them a visit. Whatever. Honestly, I’ve never really felt that way about the linkages I’ve formed; there are simply some people you meet, and you know right away that these folks are a part of your cohort. And me, I like my life to have loads of color, and I especially prefer to keep my crayon box a bit of a strewn about mess. Long ago I had parted ways with a unique person who called Finland her home, and finally I found a moment where I would head over and see her .

Even if we had never reconnected via social media, I still would have recognized Tuire in the arrivals hall at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. Ever the Scandinavian beauty, she was tall with short yet chic blonde hair, wearing white jeans rolled to her ankles and pink Hilfiger heels that styled well against a patterned tunic. After embracing, we looked at each other and remarked at the seemingly rapid passage of time. “So, twenty three years later, Megan.” Tuire said to me with a smile, “We are old!” I laughed in agreement as we made our way out of the airport and into the warm autumn air of her country.

I met Tuire while I was an exchange student in France. She was in our “intensive French” course provided by the lycée, but unlike me, Tuire was not a high school student; she was in Grenoble working as an au pair. Although the rest of us didn’t see her every day at school, Tuire rapidly folded in with our ensemble of French and international teens. On just about every weekend we’d find ourselves together with Grenoble’s finest residents as they showed us the truly magical side of the Grésivaudan valley.

 

Decades later, there wasn’t much in the way of time lost. At her home outside of Helsinki, I got to meet Tuire’s two beautiful children, and was reacquainted with her husband, Antti, whom I had once met back in France (they were just dating at the time). I had fun getting to know each of them, and even tried (in vain) to learn some Finnish, in addition to quizzing my hosts to see if they knew as many Finnish hockey players as I did (spoiler alert: they know far more). Finland, I quickly realized, was excellent at keeping a secret– or maybe I had simply never thought enough to inquire: To be friends with Finns is to discover a boundless capacity to be inviting and warm, regardless of how wintry their country may seem to us outsiders.

On Saturday morning, the lot of us bundled up and headed down to the water to take their boat for a spin on the ocean. For me, the prospect of twisting through some of Finland’s hundreds of islands at the southern tip seemed all too compelling, and as we got going, I had flashes of childhood summers at my family’s camp on East Grand Lake in Maine. The scenery really was quite similar.

As captain, Antti navigated us past piles of bumpy rock formations that seemed to sprout like massive mushrooms just above the ocean’s surface. Black birds known as merimetso circled around, and their presence made me think of our loons back home in East Grand. But there were definite differences from New England: the sheer scale of nature in Finland felt larger, and in any case there were far more saunas dotting the shoreline than Maine could ever hope to boast.

Halfway through our outing, we tied up at one of the islands to get lunch. Although there was a chill in the air, the sun had broken through the clouds so we dined on salmon soup at an outdoor picnic table. Tuire and Antti gave me a history of the area, and how the restaurant was a popular spot for folks with summer cottages. As it turned out, that day was the last that the restaurant would be open for the season, so I felt fortunate to have been taken here by my friends.

Replenished by fresh salmon and rye bread soaked with what must have been the world’s best dill, butter, and cream, the clouds really starting to break up and we made our way back to the boat. As a kid who once enjoyed tramping through the French Alps with Tuire, I felt that same sense of renewal here in the archipelago. As we zipped through the water, Tuire sat at the bow of the boat, wearing her trademark quiet smile. “I just love it here.” she said, more than once. After all these years I could finally understand the origins of her easy demeanor. No doubt her surroundings had something to do with it.

There’s so much more that I’d love to tell you about this visit. And while we didn’t do a laundry list of tourist activities, the things we did accomplish had so much more meaning. We dined on every manner of fish, Tuire brought out her old photo albums and together we pointed at familiar faces and laughed at memories that have now look dated with early 90s bad fashion. Ever grateful of the distance now bridged by technology, I snapped photos of photos and sent them via WhatsApp to other friends in the album, thus bringing others in to our little reunion.

There was one final component of my visit that bears mentioning: like the good Finns they are, Tuire and Antti have not one but two saunas on their property. Accordingly, they made sure to indoctrinate me into the finer points of the sauna experience. Armed with a can of local cider, Antti gave me basic instructions on preparing their outdoor sauna.

As we picked over pieces of birch for bark to be used as kindling, Antti went over the pros and cons of an outdoor sauna versus an indoor electric one. As a newcomer to Finland, both he and Tuire decided that before leaving I would need to try both and decide which one I preferred. Well if I must, I must….

Later in the night I found myself alongside Tuire, each of us clutching bottles of Corona while decked out in only flip flops and bathrobes– while staring up into a clear night sky. We were outdoors and at the in-between phase of the outdoor wood stove sauna experience. After a few minutes in the silent air, we’d head back into the small wooden building for another round of heat. There we perched on the upper bench, listening only to the crackling wood stove and watching how the orange light shone from the little window, providing soft illumination to the cabin.

Sitting there, we chatted when we felt like it, and remained silent when we didn’t. I thought about how much I appreciated maintaining ties with this old friend. And it wasn’t just because she and her family were showing me such boundless Finnish hospitality. It was also because Tuire was a person who had an understanding of my basic self. She was a friend from that time when I was young– a member of those fleeting years before hangups and disappointment wreak havoc on your flexibility, causing you to paper yourself in self-protection. Tuire didn’t meet me as the older and somewhat bound-up person that I have become— and now in the time we now spent as grownups, I truly appreciated this fact.

On the morning I was to leave, we first went for a walk with Tuire’s quietly inquisitive 10 year old daughter (her son was out Pokémon hunting). Even though they live in a proper neighborhood, we didn’t need to go far before feeling like we were into middle of some national park. The good fortune to be close to so much nature did not go unnoticed by Tuire, and I felt sad to be drawing my trip to a close. I’d have to come back and get more of this great outdoors. But first, I had one more thing to do.

After our walk, Tuire and I got ready to have a quick spell in their electric indoor sauna. As we made our way into the dry heat, I felt the same sense of calm that we had experienced the night before. That tranquility was only interrupted by a wall vapor that came from water being thrown on rocks withstanding 80 Celsius temperatures. The experience was at first stifling yet ultimately inviting. It made me wonder why the hell I didn’t have two or three of these saunas in my home back on Cape Cod. We need at least one of the outdoor ones.

Back outdoors, now for an abbreviated stint on the deck chairs in bathrobe attire, we leaned back and allowed the sun to bake us into the mid-morning hum. The day was pristine. As I opened my eyes and gazed upwards, I could see tiny puffy white clouds that contrasted with the sharp blue of the northern sky. It was in that moment I imprinted in my brain the sky’s color. I wanted to remember it forever— that unmistakable shade of warm and expansive blue that would serve as my memory of Tuire and her family. Her country. My good friend who helps to color my life so brightly.

I might be the last one to know it, but Finland is a very special country. As I sit here now under an opaque London sky, I can tell you that I don’t intend on waiting 23 years before making my way back again. Sure her country has more places to see—like Lapland, home of Santa Claus! But beyond all of this, there is something over there that is far more valuable. It’s the chance to connect again with people who share some of your fondest years, who put you at ease and ultimately bear proof that a lifetime of building relationships is one that pays immeasurable dividends. For all of this I really don’t know what else there’s left to say but kiitos. Thank you.