May by the lake — the in-between season

Just weeks ago, the lake was locked in ice. And then everything happened fast, like it always does here. One night the wind turned, the next morning we heard the first cracks, and within a week the water had reclaimed its place. It's become one of our favourite moments, the one we weren't expecting when we arrived. We'd been told about the snow, the cold, the northern lights. No one had warned us that there existed this parenthesis, between winter and summer, where everything seems suspended. The birches have only just opened their leaves, still tiny, a shade of green so pale it's almost transparent. At this latitude, the sun never really sets — it slides behind the hill, hesitates, and resumes its course a few hours later. Each evening, the light lasts a little longer than the day before. For the pups, it was their very first season. Four of our five are less than fifteen months old — they discovered the snow, the harnesses, their first metres of pulling on short distances by sled and ski, running free around Nanga and Summa (rip). Everything gentle, no stopwatch, no objective. Today they're shedding, playing, resting and running wild in the new enclosure we built for them behind the house. We settle onto the dock. The water is so still. Above us, the sky shifts from blue to pink to orange, without hurrying. We don't stay long. There's so much to do — we're preparing the 2026 opening, and the arrival of our first guests.