Manshausen
A day in the life
7:00am
I wake up in this bed. It’s early and I could keep sleeping, but I know the guys are already awake down in the White House. They wake up early. I roll over to look out the window. It is a glorious sunny day, not a cloud in the sky.
Okay, I’ll get up.
7:30am - 9:00am
Breakfast is probably already stretched out along the wooden table in the White House, the guys already munching. A path leads from the Main House, where I live, right to the White House, but I’ll take a round-about way for a little morning stroll.
I called the weather glorious but really I don’t have the words to describe the scene above, it is unlike anywhere I’ve been. The colors are spectacular: every shade of blue in the sky above and sea below with a belt of dark rocky mountains dusted in fresh snow, without which I may not know up from down.
I look forward to mornings in the While House every day. Breakfast is usually toast or muesli with some fruit, definitely a fresh press filled with coffee, usually refilled several times. Sometimes we drink coffee and talk, sometimes a few read and others journal or write letters. Recently a few of the guys and I work on cross word puzzles together.
What I love most of all, is the leisure of our mornings. On days like this one where I’m working the dinner shift, I am free until the evening. Other days I might start work early to get the most out of an afternoon, or I get the most out of the morning and start work around ten. Often, we are kindly left to manage our own schedules.
10:00 - 16:00
maybe Sea kayaking
maybe a long run
maybe reading on the sail boat
maybe a hike
maybe rock climbing
maybe a beach Stroll
16:00
In the evening, after a day’s work or before starting a dinner shift, I might go for a last stroll around the island, to enjoy the beauty and fresh air, but most of all to collect trash.
The first time I walked around the island I was surprised to find quite a lot of debris, both marine litter and island litter. In my little beach cleans that followed, I would pick up as much as my Patagonia pockets could hold or until my fingers were painfully cold. Then one day, pockets packed and bummed that I had forgotten to bring a bag once again, I came across a cloth tote washed ashore.
Even more outrageous, on one side of the tote was written “ velg miljø!” or “choose the environment!”: a blatant sign from the universe. The day I found this tote I decided to try my best to pick up trash everyday I spent living here. In the first week I easily filled my new tote bag everyday and found all the classics: water bottles, straws, coffee cups, fishing lines, and candy wrappers. Yet, most frightful of all are the teeny, tinniest micro plastics lining tide pools and tangled in seaweed.
17:00
I am spoiled rotten in this work for room and board arrangement. Not only do I have a flat to myself, set in a landscape of dreams, on an island shared with lovely people, but I also work many dinner shifts. This means my days are my own and evenings are spent with lovely Astrid, the only other woman on the island and chef.
We chat and make food, I ready the dinning room, serve dinner to guests and then tidy up. Tonight, Astrid has poached pears in black currant syrup for desert.
22:00
After dinner, we make bread. Astrid is teaching me the ins and outs of sourdough & Danish rye bread. I have wanted to learn bread making for ages and now I am completely obsessed with the process: watching the sourdough culture ferment and bubble, adding salt and flavors, like fennel, poppyseed and always sunflower seeds. The dough rises, you knock a little air out and let it rise again: parchment paper on a baking sheet, divvying up rolls, or spilling dough into molds. One final rest while the oven gets hot, a little whisper “good luck” and then in it goes. Sweet baby dough cooked into a golden loaf.
To make bread is such a hearty skill and such a loving gift to give. It is magical to make something so deliciously substantial from flour and water. We get fancy with nuts and seeds, we experiment with different flours, and even if it doesn’t go perfectly it is always eatable.
I am very attracted to making things, especially things that require time and patience: jams, pickles, bread. It is a dream of mine to one day have a root cellar filled with jars of preserves from my garden.
23:00
The bread is baking and I am in the garden, taking out the day’s compost. My final chore of the day, I take my time to enjoy the cold, usually foregoing my coat so it is extra cold.
On a clear night I look at the stars, and the moon if she is out. On a night with no wind, I stand for a moment and appreciate the silence. Here silence is unlike anything I have heard before: utter, deadly, still. But usually the wind is howling.
Back in the Main House, I say good night to Astrid who is staying up with the baking bread. Up the stairs I walk, past the library and sitting room, through the sliding door into my little flat. The window on the second floor, farthest to the left, is the window above my bed. I tilt the window open, as European windows tend to do, opening from the top rather than the side. I crawl into bed cozy under the duvet and with a fresh chill sneaking through the window, I fall right asleep.
Good night.