Happy Hatters – Enjoying the Simple Life

This week's theme for Sunday Scribblings is "simple."

Been digging in old photo albums lately… came across this one of my sister R and I. I’m the one on the left in the green jacket. I was probably about 4 years old, so she must be 3. The smiling guy in the background is our proud Daddy.

I just love the colors in this shot… and I love hats like that! I have a small collection of them and wear them often. Seems like my obsession with hats, clothes and colors got an early start – apparently, I had a keen fashion sense back then. Grandma sewed my jacket – it had matching overalls, too.

The picture is taken at our “cabin” in rural Norway. The cabin was actually a small farmstead that had been in my family for generations, a place to come to escape the bustle of the city and enjoy a simpler life. My father, who wore suits and ties most days couldn’t wait to come out there, roll up his sleeves, don work boots and -gloves and cut the grass with a scythe (the ground was too rocky for a regular mower). He would take his chain saw and cut down trees and chop wood. He would make repairs to the outbuildings and renovate the main house. One year, we dug a cellar beneath the kitchen floor.

I spent every summer of my life from the year I was born until my late teens at that cabin. For us kids coming there meant long carefree days roaming the countryside exploring the steep, rocky landscape, building forts, and swimming in the icy river.

The river was accessible by a trek across a field, through a dense wooded area, down a sheer cliff wall that some ancestor had once picked rudimentary steps into, across some train tracks and finally through a patch of heavy brush. The water was always so cold it made your pulse race and your legs ache, but if you could just force yourself to duck, and keep your body submerged for a few minutes, you almost got used to it.

We would pick berries and crush them with sugar for fresh jam with the next meal. We ate countless slices of bread with raspberry and blueberry jam that we had fixed ourselves.

R and I spent several summers working at a neighboring farm picking strawberries. This was the best summer job ever! We would ride our bikes there at about 7 in the morning – it was downhill all the way, so we picked up a ferocious speed. We would spend the next four hours picking (and eating!) the sweet berries as fast as our hands could move. You got paid by the basket, so it was up to you how much money you could make. I got pretty good after a while, and made what to my young mind seemed a fortune at the time. At 11am we would be done for the day, ride (read: walk) our bikes back up all the hills and have the rest of the day off to do whatever came to mind.

Part of the charm of coming to the cabin was the peculiar outfits we wore. Our “cabin clothes” were old hand-me-downs of uniquely strange appearance and ambiguous origin, and a vast stash of old rain boots and other shoes of assorted purpose. We threw on whatever was handy without a thought of what matched – in fact, the more it didn’t match the better – and were free to climb trees and cliffs and explore all day long without having to worry about ruining our clothes.

To my sisters and me the simple life was epitomized by our very own eclectic sense of carefree style for a few weeks every year.