Author: Magdalena Cavallin

I have lived my entire life in the countryside and have always been filled with wonder over nature, the life and the beauty. I live on a farm in Sweden in the middle of nowhere and since 2015 I have together with my sister taken over my parents farm. Here I try to combine all the things I love best: Be and work in nature together with my dogs, to sing and study and photograph, my catholic faith, and last but not least to contemplate and recognise "the extraordinary in the ordinary".

Winterdays and Christmas preparations

There are few things I like as prepare for Christmas. I think it is the short and cold days that ask for spending cosy days in the kitchen, preparing with cakes and chocolates and truffles…and of course our gingerbread town. My sister and I have for over 20 years made a gingerbread town for Christmas. The challenge consists of making it both tasty and also appealing for the eye. This town has changed its apparence a little every year, but the church and the train have always been present. Last year I added an abside to make it a little more a line a cathedral. Here are some pictures showing this year’s town, the summit of preparations.

Before I put the church together I decorate the parts standing up.
The most difficult stage is done, to put it together with melted sugar.
A family that is a little late for mass… This is a gift from my brother and his wife. They bought it in U.S.

A Frosty Walk

Walks in frost are special; hidden things are made visible. Things that you do not really think were there come forth in their sublimity but also in their own little world. Spiders webs. Both dew and frost all of a sudden reveal the intricate patterns these little creatures have created. Creatio s which are both practical and beautiful.

Sunday colours

There is few things as beautiful as fog in the morning a winter day… A walk that lasted some hours, cold but very beautiful.

I love these lonley roads, especially on Sunday forenoons when people prefer being at home, I suppose taking a long breakfast. There is a silence in the air created, I think, by the low temperature, as if every creature is economising with even the callings to save some energy. Even the thoughts become sparse, the mind listening to the sound of birds flapping and one’s own footsteps in the snow.

A lovely walk in the snow

The snow comes and goes, and with it the reflection of the sun on the ground. One never really knows how the walk will turn out, as this walk with Toby. We had been waking for one and a half hour then suddenly the sun found its way through the clouds and we are standing there bathed in winter evening light. I appreciate these gems of moments very much. I think it is because I am not in control, and thus can receive it as a gift.

An interesting walk

I was out walking with Toby and decided to try a new route and follow a trail I hadn’t walked before. It turned out to be a little adventure, crossing a swamp and then found our way through and up a great clearcut. I could see on the ground that it had been fields and pastures probably 100 years from now. Three hills and three valleys we crossed, listening to a family of ravens calling to each other. All human sounds were absent which created a sense of being in the wilderness far from all civilisation, a soothing feeling. The ravens were in their right element and their hoarse calling appealed to me in their somberness. Toby found of course the new place very interesting and was full of excitement. With time we found our way home through forest roads lined with piles of timber.

A moment of remembering

It was more than seven years ago. I got up before the others in the house. It was the month of April, thus nature was not in her complete spring colours, but the mornings were bright, full of smells and sounds. Toby was just some months old and as all puppies, an early bird. This particular morning we took a stroll along our little lake. While standing by the edge of the lake, the air together with the rising sun created an almost unreal feeling. Toby was fascinated by the water, but also by the light I think. He sat for a long time just looking at the surface. It was a lovely time which I still would like to return to, the silence, the light, the warm air.

Toby by the lake

As the years have passed I have tried to realise that some moments just don’t repeat themselves. They remain there in your soul accompaning you through life. Toby isn’t a puppy anymore, the lake is different.

Some months ago my sister and I was returning home from a walk with the dogs. Passing by the lake at another place I was suddenly struck by the same feeling and the same ambience. He sat there, looking at the lake, now seven years old, attentive. Just a moment of silence, now at dusk and the lake partially covered by ice. A quick feeling of gratefulness and surprise came over me to, to just for some seconds, get hold of the same feeling of a slight unreality created by sun and water.

A fire in the woods

I took a walk in the forest one day and came upon a fire in the woods without any people around it. It rendered an almost faërie tale atmosphere to the situation, as if I had come upon a secret meeting among faëries. The firewood was red and inviting and at the same time I felt like an intruder. I passed it and followed my path to the little farm in the middle of the forest, standing close to a small river with an old broken water mill, dreaming undisturbed dreams to the music of streaming water under a thick layer of ice.