Gotska Sandön – A Sand Island in the Sea

The island rises out of the sea, the boat is approaching and the green forest horizon grows bigger and sharper by the minute. Here I am again on the island in the middle of the ocean. The trees, the heather, the flowers, the sand, the moss, the pine cones, all of it painted by light arouses my senses into life and hope. I long for the first meeting with the secret of nature, surrounded by the awareness of the map of the sand beaches. I start wandering into silence filled with hope. My senses focus the motive on my retina, I stop and feel my limits in the ocean of nature that I tread.

Out of the sea there is a sand bank rising from the bottom of the sea. Formed in a triangle it shapes a back for the trees, the sand surrounds the stubborn forest, there is no end. The amount and variation of the trees, the green carpet from where the pine trees grow is deep and infinite in its caring. I lie on my back and I am still and become one with the silence. The bordering line to the sea is the closeness and link I can reach, not see. The spaces are infinite, there is no end, only beginning.

I move slowly, touch the closeness, the security, the power that grows out of the sand. I talk to the trees, they show me their secret, the constant repetition. This forest, mostly order and straight trunks, takes shape, becomes a squiggle, a sculpture of joy. The spaces are filled with the colours and variations of light. I have arrived to the right place, I keep wandering in the forest and on the beaches with the hope of seeing something new. I see the ocean and the soft sand dunes forming the border line to the forest. The silence is eternal in the heather when all is still, my body floats in the universe, rocked, lifted by the waves of the ocean.

The silvery colour shifts in the light, the trees are monuments of movement and life, power and vulnerability, sensuality and warmth. They are hope and sensitivity, a power of tension in dialogue with nature. They take hold of me, I am never alone. They are the most visible of the whole, a synthesis of sky, earth and water, a symbol for dynamics as opposed to the stone a power in change, starting from the inside and growing to expectation.

They are always there, I can trust them. I walk around in the sand, I want to meet them in this room of stillness. This remarkable place, the life of which was the body between ocean and land. A primeval landscape formed by wind and heat, sun and water. Here I get nutrition. They are there around the island, I discover new ones every time I come here, adding symbols to my landscape, which becomes clearer every year. New sculptures with eternal life. Time has its rooms, the archetypes which I collect for a map get their meaning far later.

The beach is laborious to walk on. The waves of the sea constantly play with the outline of the beach. The wind presses against my chest, the sand sweeps around my legs, I push my way forward, take brace, turn my back to it. I move against the wind resisting me. I see the movement, the small grain of sand clambering up on the edge of the beach, washed away and returning, forming my way. The power is close and lifts my body over the trees. I cannot stop, I have to discover my island in the sea, be surrounded by the silence, see the colours of the sky reflected in the sea coming towards me and sweeping my body over the trees.

The island is my security, I know where it is. The order here is not predetermined. I reflect myself in the sand, the body between the sea and the forest. The beach is the land of possibilities, a place for the desires to play, for imagination and joy. The beach is the area closest to the sea, diverse and enigmatic, sensual in its own body.

An island in the sea is alluring and inaccessible. On my way there I know what will meet me, but the feeling of treading on the sand is always new and unpredictable. New every time I get there and yet the same. The knowledge of the beach between the sea and the forest makes me free. It is my island, rebirth returns. The power in the rooms among the trees, the closeness that I pass. I want to get lost among the trees, play catch and dance on the heather with my dream. I catch the silence in a waltz and look around for motives in space. What is small becomes large and what is large becomes small, there is no end.