In the nearby fjäll the canyons are bursting with foaming white water, blasting its way downhill, gushing into lakes, into rivers, into the sea. Released from the frozen hold of winter there’s no stopping it.
We feel a bit like that. When our house didn’t sell we just had to hold on, make the most of it, keep fighting for a life here, but now it’s sold there’s a tremendous release of energy. We’re emptying cupboards, dismantling furniture, making plans, moving things, packing things, rejecting things, keeping things.
Everything’s on the move in all directions. We’re sorting into wood, electricals, metal, plastic, paper, cardboard, textiles, recycle or resell. Boxes of china, tables and chairs, piles of curtains and rugs trickle out our front door, rushing faster and faster back to the secondhand shop they came from. Bags of metal parts, electrical items and textiles sweep out of sight on a strong tide, drawn on an irresistible current out to the recycling centre. Like the Sea of Tears in Alice, our things float away so easily, and everything going backwards, back to its origins.
It might feel sad, but it doesn’t really. You build something up and then you let it fall apart. Kiruna’s the place for that – areas built out of the landscape return to the landscape. Places we’ve known are rushing away from us at speed. Streets knocked down only last year are already grassland, with no trace there was ever anything else there. Destroying the town doesn’t happen in a big bang – buildings are taken apart piece by piece, materials sorted into piles, and eventually, with a little assistance from a giant metal scooping claw, remaining structures just slide to the ground, and are gone.
We haven’t liked watching the destruction, but now we’re dismantling our own lives here there’s no more resistance, just a feeling of going with the flow – soon we too are gone, without a trace.
