For a very long time, I have been an indoor person. Like one of those indoor cats, that has been so tamed and domesticated. When every other cat will rush an open door to become the feral being that it was always meant to be, I sit at the window, preferring to look longingly outside than actually venture into nature.  From that vantage point, I would rather reminisce on the good old days when I was the king of kittens, hunting lightening bugs and rolling in the grass with innocent fragility.  At some point in my young life, I decided I would be a grown up and do grown up things.  And for some reason, playing outside didn’t feel adult.  So I lingered inside, staring at computers and watching movies.  I forgot the softness of grass or the excitement of looking at the curious body of a bug.

When I arrived in Denmark, it took me a while to notice that something was different.  I spent my first week with my head down in a map, just trying not to get lost, and really hoping that I hadn’t misread the bus schedule.  But as I became more confident in my ability to navigate this new country, I started to truly take it in.  Somehow, in the first weeks of jetlag and confusion, an inkling began to nudge at the back of my brain; I started to feel a long forgotten energy beckon to me.

I began sitting on the porch, wrapped in blankets in freezing weather just to feel the early morning wind on my face or watch the sun drop below the roof of the house.  Sometimes, I would work on homework, or read a book, but more often than not, I just sat and breathed, almost meditation, almost communion.

Through the deepest part of winter, I simply just sat, but slowly, the ever-present snow began to decline and the trails through the wood behind my house cleared.  Finally, the feeling that had nagged at me for weeks began to clarify, but I still couldn’t comprehend it.  I felt so restless, that in the space of a moment, I became that feral cat again, and sprang for the door, called to nature and into the woods.  Though I didn’t know where I was going, I just walked.  I approached a divide and quickly decided to take an uphill path.

My host mom later told me that what I had climbed was called Maglebjerg, and it was famous because it was the highest point in northern Sealand.  In a country that is primarily flat, that didn’t mean much: Maglebjerg is just 91 meters above sea level.  At the time, though, the only thing that mattered was that I had reached the top of this, what can most accurately be described as, hill.  The small plateau was bare except for a few young trees and a waist-high stone marker.  I promptly did an awkward double hop to hoist myself onto the marker.  Sitting there, my mind started to settle.  I simply looked around, thinking about the trees and snow and dirt, feeling on top of the world yet inseparably part of it.  I don’t know how long I was up there, but eventually the sun began to set.  It was achingly fast, but brilliant and colorful in the bare trees.  I walked back down the hill in the fading evening glow.  

I returned to that spot again and again as the months turned and the trees thrust tender leaves into the still too cold air.  Sometimes I wrote during these intermissions, occasionally I sang silly nonsense songs or drew pictures in the dirt with a stick, though usually I simply sat and observed the world around me.  The forest called my soul, reawakening the girl who would let bugs crawls on her hands just to watch them move.  I was that feral cat, running to claim her stone throne, perched and waiting to catch the sunset and the taste in the air that is indefinably Denmark.

Maggie Hoot, an Art History major and Museum Studies Concentrator in the Class of 2016, had never truly immersed herself in a foreign culture before she studied in Denmark. During her time abroad, she not only fell in love with Denmark, but also developed a deep appreciation for new ways of life and thought. She hopes to return to Denmark, and also travel to new places in order to better understand the world and her place in it.

by