When I write or speak about the important questions in life, when I still try to build dams in the way of a devastating flood, most of my friends and many strangers regard me as a naïve optimist. They think that the game is already over, that the life of the planet is in decline and it's crumbling down at a rapidly accelerating pace towards the final suffocation, and there's nothing anyone can do about it anymore.

But I still argue against them. I know the same things that they do, I know that the end of history is nigh. Still, I am talking about very high probabilities, not about certainties. It is almost the same thing, but only almost.

Besides, I am also interested in less than those thinkers and observers, who mean "total solution", that is, preserving the life of globe till the distant future. In an emergency, I am satisfied with delay, postponement (even a slight one) - "extra time for nature", as the late zoologist and friend of nature Olli Järvinen titled his collection of columns. It isn't irrelevant to a human individual whether he lives to 80 or 81 years old, is it, as he will usually hang onto his extra year or extra days - like all animals do.

I see a value in itself even in mere speculation - even if we are just considering and examining hypothetically under what conditions, after what degree of changes the continuation or lengthening of life could be assured.

Ultimately, I'm resigned to just look for an explanation of the world for its own sake, without the aim of reform - at least for the time being. I am constructing a report, and I strive, in a way, to be a historian of the last ages, more insightful and accurate than most. I have had to struggle in attempt to split the chaos into fractions, to divide the wide front of human insanity into sections for examination, as I attempt a difficult analysis after an easy synthesis.

Although my view is a world-wide one and my area of observation is Europe, the nation closest to my heart is, understandably, my homeland. And it is a fortunate coincidence, fortunate in terms of the explanation of the world, that it is this country which is the clearest example of the playground of destructive development in the whole world. Even the ethnologist and explorer, Kai Donner, stated a long time ago that Finno-Ugric people, of all the peoples, have been the most willing to absorb the influence of western culture, to abandon their own. Faster and more entirely than any other nation, Finland charges into the most horrid of forms of the market economy, uncritical worship of technology, automation, the vapidity of the media, information technology pervading all functions and forms of human intercourse, and adopting English (American) as a second language, but as the first one in an increasing amount of careers.

Amidst all this I'm very quick to note, and catalogue, the good and joyful things in the chaos. These glimmer in this collection of writings as well. They all have a common denominator however, which is that they still exist, I have found no new good that has been brought about by progress. The juxtaposition of good and evil appears at it's finest in my memoirs of Karelia, which I have placed at the beginning of the collection to be a motto of sorts.

There is much repetition in these articles, as they were written for different contexts, and there is much overlap with the texts of other thinkers, with my earlier works and between the ones in this collection too. This is the least of my worries, as repetition is to some extent the mother of learning. How many thousandfold more echoes are in that liturgy which hums and splatters all the time around us, the liturgy of prophets and their flock praising economic growth, competitiveness, efficiency, and "competence."

Sääksmäki 25.4.2004
Pentti Linkola

My father researched the flora of the Laatokka-Karelia region every summer till the years of war, when he met his death. Yet he did not take his son with him to the meadows of Impilahti. I did not see the Old Karelia before the border was closed. When I behold Karelia in a way so different from those who have experienced personal losses there, that background doesn't explain the difference, not even in the least. But, let that be mentioned. I surely have as passionate feelings towards Karelia as the most fanatical of the dreamers about Karelia do.

I did make it to the next stage of Karelia, the Soviet-Karelia, where my powerful experiences started. It's a pity that the mass tourism has so devalued the stories of earlier journeys. I'd like to reminisce sometime about the trip to Petroskoi in the 1970's on paper.

Through perestroika, it was smoothly morphed from the true Soviet-Karelia into the New Karelia, the Russian-Karelia. I didn't rush in with the first waves of tourists chauffeured by taxi or bus. I listened and felt - the complaining of the Great-Finns, the contrasting praise of the friends of nature. Only during the last few years have I then sailed, for some weeks, on the Laatokka, and rowed on the Vuoksi. Not yet with the same liberties as elsewhere in Europe, but halfway so nonetheless.

It then happened that all previous accounts paled into insignificance. There was nothing flawed in their strength and vividness, but the reality of Karelia threw them all overboard. My expectations were in the right direction, but were also so fulfilled that they spilt over. I cannot find sufficiently powerful words needed for the language either, so I'll choose another method. I will try to explain the factors that made our eastern border the most amazing in the world: a hell on one side, a paradise on the other.

It takes time when one treks from day to day in the overwhelming lushness of the islands and the beaches of Vuoksi, in the thickets of willows, wild maples, groves of birches, aspens and bird-cherries, surrounded by all the wondrous birds that can be found from the groves of Northern Europe, icterine warblers, golden orioles, long-tailed tits, red-breasted flycatchers and white-backed woodpeckers, and when one listens, mile after mile, to the abundant clamour of the coastal grass, bitterns, spotted crakes and great reed warblers - it takes time, before one can calm down as a naturalist to ponder the birth of such an ecosystem.

I was aware beforehand, of course, that a grove recovers, renews and grows quicker than the other types of forest. There are now hundreds of square kilometres of areas under study in Karelia, which show that in fifty years, from a scraggy forest full of firewood, a dilapidated strand of boats and pastures, grows a virgin grove, which seems to have attained the final balance. It already has mighty fullgrown trees and the number of decaying blocks of wood, stumps, fallen trees and all the heeling angles of leaning trees that a virgin forest could hold - all of which are needed by the thousands of animals, plants and mushrooms in the grove.

Green groves, green meadows! Where a Finnish clearing of the same latitude lies bare for half a year, reduced to a gloomy black soil, Karelia flourishes with its cattle and grasslands, and the lovely laxity and inefficiency of the animal husbandry leaves flowers room to blossom in. We have to go back seventy years before the clicking of corncrakes similar to that of the modern meadows of Karelia can be encountered on this side of the border. How long would we have to go back in the history of Saimaa before we would encounter the same kind of teeming of ringed seals as at Laatokka, where they are splashing around beside every rock?

Then what about the presence of people on the Karelian Isthmus? Humanity is the key to everything; he either controls or lets go. There, I look at humanity as much as I do nature; I'm enchanted by both. I'm enchanted by the absence of humanity: no rapist, no villa, no pier, no motorboat, even though miles pass. But I'm charmed by the presence of human as well, by those little fishermen, grey and silent, in the shade of a willowbush in a riverbend, which I notice only when my boat almost collides with them. I never see a rod even tremble. The calmness is perfect.

First and foremost, I was captivated by their villages. They amuse me in a joyful way. How is it statistically possible that not one of the hundreds of sheds and cottages is at spirit level, a right angle? And how is it possible that stacks of boards, piles of whittled logs, concrete pillars and bars unavoidably fall asleep in the high grass and goldfinches' thistles before they would stand up as pompous, unneeded and excessive buildings?

But I also see the main point amidst the junk: passable and adequate homes, hundreds and thousands of small greenhouses and patches where plants grew for cooking. We examined a lakeside village, where houses are loosely placed in the same manner as in Finland, but they are not connected by driveways, rather, they're connected by lovely little paths on which farmers and their housewives carry their bags from the village shop, lively and upright. We approach the village from the side of the continent and find that there's really only one road to the village, impassable for regular cars, as only a Russian truck with a high ground clearance can crawl along it's deep grooves.

There was also a three floor Stalin-model apartment house in the village. Merry children and dogs play in the yard. At least during the summer there are no doors to be seen - only the entrances. There's a continuous flow of swallows in and out of them. I did not dare barge up the stairs, and so I still wonder where their nests were - did they ascend to various floors, or maybe apartments, through staircases? Trees and bushes poke at the walls and penetrate inside the building, through the windows. For once, man is willing to be one with nature. A Western friend of nature is definitely stunned.

We encountered an enormous show of hiking and camping at the great lake of Käkisalmi, which has hundreds of islands. Hundreds, probably thousands of rowing-boats populated the sultry lake: there were families, couples, mostly youngsters, groups of friends. I remember one boat distinctly, with its joyous noise of laughter and chat that could be heard far away, even though only one girl, of a student's age, could be seen briskly rowing the boat. While passing close by, I counted seven bare legs, hanging over the edge, cooling toes in the water.

We joined in, staying for the night with the boatgroups during a couple of nights at the islands. A ready campfire site had been made on all the hard beaches, and beds of dried reeds had been left on most of them by the previous campers.

There was incessant telling of tales and laughter at the neighboring fires till the middle of night, boys' and girls' voices alternating, and continuous cutting of firewood with, to be frank, primitive little axes. Saws weren't amongst the tools, so stumps and living trees suffered from a radius of only ten meters from the campfire: a virgin forest started from there. At four o' clock in the morning, the axes started to snap again, fires smoked, there was frolicking and an echo of clamor. It seems it wasn't worth wasting such a lovely weekend by sleeping.

The puzzle of the rowing armadas' was solved, as actually two, quite large, boat rental stores with insignificant prices were found on the shores. But from where did a third of the fleet - long, camouflage-colored canoe-pairs, whose outstanding seaworthiness was apparent in the fierce rapids of Vuoksi - originate? We didn't get an explanation until we were at Käkisalmi's railway station near the strand, to which a green, stately holiday train from Petersburg arrived every half an hour. Couples emerged, carrying big bundles, undoubtedly containing a tent, a sleeping bag and provisions. But no, in fact a pile of pieces of cloth and frames of light alloy were exposed: in two minutes, a canoe was built and a young couple was going full speed to the archipelago.

On the journey back, the idyll cruelly shatters on the road. The menace, which we have known was there all the time, manifests itself. Finnish trailer trucks, brightly colored, tuned up, full of brutish strength, rumble towards the west, each with fifty tons of white birches. We meet other Finns in Vyborg. Some anxious girls come to us, they have been to other beaches at the Isthmus, and they ask why the Finnish environmentalists and their organizations can't stop the plundering of Karelia. But what can we do about Tehdaspuu, Enso-Gutzeit, Eno-Cell, who have an other outlook on life and a thousandfold more horsepower?

Visiting Karelia clarifies the thoughts and teaches a lot. Many strange things, memories and associations are evoked.

I suddenly remember Winter War, Continuation War, the newspapers of that time and the speeches by relatives and kin very clearly. I remember the constant banging on about the "clay-legged giant", and that one Finn is equivalent to ten Russians. Now that I look at the strong Russian canoeists and think about the slack youngsters of my native region who are completely enslaved by car and motorboat, rushing around carelessly, I see that one Russian is equivalent to ten Finns at the moment. But it isn't a war now, and they can't compete in a tradewar.

In Karelia, I see, more clearly than ever, through the hypocritical illusion that man and nature could flourish simultaneously. They are always the opposites of each other, either - or. But in Karelia, I see a man, who ACCEPTS and RELINQUISHES. It is an awesome experience.

At last I understand why I live in constant horror in my own country, to which I'm bonded: why I have the feeling that I was being punched in the face all the time. It is not purely caused because forests have been ravaged and shores degraded on the demands of the market; it doesn't arise from the vast number of paved and concrete surfaces itself, or the excessive garish shine of cars wherever you lay your eyes. It is because everything in this country is raw, smooth, obvious, polished, perfect. The most horrendous thing is that this country is in the grip of order, here everything is in order. The brush saw is the most dreadful of tools. Every grain of sand has been stamped with the additional sign of ownership by man. There is nothing mysterious in Finland, nothing gentle, no faint shimmer anywhere.

For a moment, hope flashes in the groves of Vuoksi. Maybe sometime my Finland too, my Tavastia, will look like this, and will be revived. The grip of the tormentors loosens. My homeshores, my homeforests, are green and lush again. But it is only a flash. That won't happen. The opposite will.

I don't believe that it was good to see Karelia. Karelia is like joy, like the joy of human life always is - you see a glimpse of it, and then it is gone. Sorrow always remains the uppermost emotion.

1993