Good morning ...
Sunday 07:30 Damn it. I can't sleep again. I decided to get up instead of tossing and turning. I don't want to wake the boyfriend who needs his beauty sleep, so I came to the living room to read. Yes I am still reading A Woman in the Polar Night. I read other things in between so to make it last. I read slow and twice every chapter. I am now reading excruciatingly slow because I really do not want to finish this journey. I wish I could speak German to read it in its original form. This woman had such an insight. Such sensitivity for her surroundings. It makes me sad because there are a lot of gruesome stories and details about killing animals (since she was living with two hunters in a hut for a year) but apart from that, everything else fascinates me. Now, even thought there are many journals written about the Arctic (and the Antarctic), from explorers, scientists and even hunters, I don't think I will find anything similar to this. This is really unique. I am very happy I discovered it. It is the type of book that goes to my "to read over and over" shelf. It takes me to places I imagined so many times I will one day explore. It calms me down. It makes me happy. And even more happy, when I know this is not Flaubert's imaginary landscapes; But real places, places that are waiting for me. One day. One day. Some day.
"Overnight it has become dead quiet, and as I open the door of the hut in the early morning, for the first time there is no white wall. The narrow path through the snow is still there. It leads to a vast, solemn stillness, to a never seen and unimaginable world of splendour and beauty"
Christiane Ritter
1937
"Overnight it has become dead quiet, and as I open the door of the hut in the early morning, for the first time there is no white wall. The narrow path through the snow is still there. It leads to a vast, solemn stillness, to a never seen and unimaginable world of splendour and beauty"
Christiane Ritter
1937