On Fleeing Nordic Gloom and Finding a Portuguese Storm

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Many modern Danes have  developed a peculiar relationship with harsh weather - we don't adapt, we flee, and when Nordic winter darkness descends, we book flights. 

Rita and I succumbed to this impulse last week, boarding a plane to Lisbon, where winter just about now should be yielding to blissful spring. 

How perfectly ironic that we arrived just as the historically wild storm named Martinho hammered upon the Portuguese coastline.

As we huddled up in our apartment, watching the rain lashing horizontally against Alfama's ancient buildings, we considered how Martinho had conspired against our escape plan; how the brutal winds now seemed to mock the notion that we could outrun nature's rhythms.


Yesterday, I sat in a tiny cafe, completely drenched after yet another massive downpour. I scrolled through weather forecasts on my mobile (as if digital certainty might alter physical reality!), when an old man approached my table. 

"You came for the sun?" he asked with a knowing smile.

When I nodded, he laughed. "In Portugal, we don't control the weather. The weather controls us."

I enjoyed talking with this local Lisbonian who seemed untouched by the contemporary neurosis insisting all discomfort should be engineered away.

And perhaps this storm can actually be what Rita and I needed. 

We might not get the sunshine we came looking for, but we get a reminder that human agency has limits and that nature operates according to principles indifferent to our convenience.

Perhaps next winter, instead of fleeing, we will stay at home and light some candles against darkness. 

Perhaps we will accept what cannot be changed. And in doing so, we might find a deeper comfort than any Southern escape could provide - the comfort of belonging to a world we cannot control, but can learn to embrace.

In Lisbon, they have the concept of saudade - a bittersweet longing for something absent. 

As Rita and I soon return to Nordic winter, I wonder if we might develop a peculiar saudade for Storm Martinho - this unwanted companion that reminds us that some of life's most valuable lessons can come wrapped in discomfort.

And isn't that a storm worth weathering together?

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