Photo by Razvan Mirel on Unsplash

The botanical garden in Visby didn’t have greenhouses like the one here does—Many big ones in a giant, 150-year-old glass palace. I passed through them all yesterday and found myself feeling ambivalent about plants in “cages,” so to speak. I’ve read a lot about plant sentience over the last few years and although I don’t know if they find it aversive in any way to live in a greenhouse, and presumably that’s the only way they could live at all in this climate, it’s an even more artificial environment than the outdoor regions of the garden. It feels different to me, even if not to them. So, I spent most of my time walking around outside; beauty after beauty. And when I walked back to the hotel, I diverted through a public park of about the same size and surprisingly almost as lovely, although definitely not offering the enormous variety of the other. But it is a fine place and well taken care of; Copenhagen is a “messier” city than the others I’ve seen but it didn’t show in this park, which seemed to be treated with respect by its visitors and care by its staff of caretakers. Cities rub against my nerves but just getting some distance into parks and I breathe easier, feel better.

Photo by Kristijan Arsov on Unsplash

Photo by Alex Ghiurau on Unsplash

Copenhagen Botanical Garden Walk
https://youtu.be/DLtPmvntIpE  

Tomorrow I drive to Malmo and turn in the rent car and go into Denmark, my last country on the trip. I am ready to get home although ambivalent. It’s been so satisfying to visit all these places and in many to feel so much at home and to know that the odds are I don’t have enough life left to return that to have it come to a close feels wrong in some queer way. I couldn’t and wouldn’t spend much more time in travel mode—it is wearying in ways and I like being settled as I am when I camp. I think it’s just the feeling of losing the connection and its becoming only memory and realizing I’ll probably never expatriate and therefore spend the remainder of my life in a failing country for which I have no respect or affection. I know how to detach and create a relatively closed space around me psychologically and will do that even while staying somewhat abreast of the course of national decay, but the idea of living in a country that I admired and whose ways and people appealed to me more than at home will not evaporate even if I choose not to invest a lot of energy in it. It’s hard to say how much my feeling is an aversion to what I see in the U.S. vs. an attraction to what I don’t have but see in these countries. Obviously, it’s both and probably more or less balanced.

After my first visit I read something that shocked me–in this garden there lives a Sequoia, which was planted in 1961 and is now about 50-60’ high. I was almost unbelieving and found it an interesting coincidence that I sat beneath it the first time I chose to just be present with all that was growing there, to silently admire the trees and other plants and feel the spirit of the place. Each time I came back to the garden, I sat beneath that tree. The informational plaque beside it was in Swedish and it took a while to find someone who could translate it for me, but it said nothing about how and why the Sequoia seed was brought to Visby, and that was my main interest. I’ll try to email and learn more. I found a sibling to Yosemite Valley in a Norwegian fjord and now a tree from the Sierra; so many connections. There was also a Dawn Redwood, a species I’d not heard of but that turns out to be one of the three species of which the Sequoia and Coast Redwoods in California are the other two making up the genus. The Dawn variety is native to China, a curiosity to say the least, and approached extinction but is now being planted in many places such as this botanical garden. It did not look like the Coast Redwood and I suspect wasn’t altogether healthy. The Sequoia, on the other hand, was flourishing.

Photos by Author – Craig Brestrup

Sweden Walks: Visby Botanical garden

The difference is that Mönsterås isn’t for tourists so its shops are functional in meeting people’s regular needs. I saw an old cathedral with a high tower that didn’t look terribly prosperous but was still cared for and went in; no one was there and I sat for a while and meditated. Despite my lack of interest in Christianity, cathedrals like this one have an atmosphere of silent solemnity that I enjoy. I don’t know its age but it was of the generation of such buildings where the pews have a door between them and the aisles. I looked it up and found they’re called box pews and apparently were built to keep warmth in for the people sitting there, who usually were members of a family. It’s hard to imagine they didn’t also serve to keep unwanted people out. At any rate, it was a satisfying, peaceful time and I was glad to have found it.

Then I walked down the street, where the only open business (it was between 9 and10) was a small bakery/café where I got coffee and a roll and sat quietly within for a quarter hour or so. It was run by an older woman who spoke little English but told me the coffee machine was “kaput” so I had the regular brew. This place also had a satisfying atmosphere, as did the old town itself. There need to be far more venues where people can be quiet and perhaps even put away their devices for a few minutes and simply ponder. Monsteras turned out an excellent place for a whim, an hour well spent.

Photo by Oleh Holodyshyn on Unsplash