Conversation

I'm standing with my hands in my pockets by the side of the road. I'm contemplating the stones beneath the oaks. They are not small, but each maybe the size of a kitchen chair and have been dropped off here from the front loader of a tractor at some time I'm guessing. There's an odd thing here with age. These oaks have been here a long time - from the girth of the largest I've seen, 250 years at a guess. Who knows what generations preceded them. I'll try to find out the history of this little wood as I can, but for now, I'm thinking at least 250 years.

They're growing on thin sandy soil; bedrock emerges here and there, each covered with a plumage of lichen and short mosses. The oaks have an intimate relation with the rock and the soil. The new kitchen chair rocks are just as old as the bedrock - they were perhaps left behind in Mynämäki by a retreating glacier; rubble, but the stuff of geology.

I'm wondering how long it'll take the oakwood to assimilate these stones, for them to weather and leach and to grow into one another in that intricate way minerals and trees have with each other.

It's not Pentti Saarikoski, long dead, but he certainly looks like a photograph I've seen of him with full beard and long flying 1970s hair. He cycles a little past - I think his brakes need attention - then halts and turns his bike and himself round and comes to stand beside me, facing the same direction. He speaks: in Finnish, but when I apologise in English for not understanding the language, he attempts English.

I'm guessing he's about my age. His bike is old, his clothes denim and well worn; world-wide America sits on his head in the shape of a baseball hat. His clear eyes regard me with some curiosity and he makes his thoughts plain in one word and a grand gesture in the direction of where I had been looking: What?

I shrug - how to tell him I'm thinking of the interdependence of mineral and plant? I say one of my three Finnish words: Oak. His eyes wrinkle around the edges Ah! he says, sighing and I warm to a man who can take that as a full explanation.

He speaks again in Finnish and indicates the cloth bag on his handlebars. For a moment I think he might bring out anything: mushrooms, glittering mica, an ammonite, a seahorse.

It's vodka - the cheapest available from Alko, the State monopoly drink shop in town. Leijona brand at 13 euros 25 cents a bottle. I know this because not two hours ago I bought a bottle.

Twisting the screwtop with a crack he offers me the bottle and it's then I say my second Finnish word: Cheers! His blue eyes wrinkle again, he smiles as I swig and hand it back. He swigs and we together contemplate oak. Another swig each and the bottle goes back into the bag.

He's cycled a round trip of 24 kilometres for that bottle. He remounts his bike and points it towards the west again, and my third Finnish word comes out as he cycles off: Thanks!

His smile again and I have no need to understand the words of his reply as he waves his arm up and back. It's a gesture that takes in oak, minerals, age, kitchen chairs, and humanity.

***

Life is given to man
to make him consider carefully
the position he'd like to be dead in

Pentti Saarikoski