My Balcony View
Musings over my change of scenery
My balcony has a view I didn’t want. The hotel next door cut down the strip of forest between us and expanded their hotel. And put in a car park.
We now have a view of the comings and goings of guests.
This morning, a wasp flew in through the open glass panel. We drank our coffee and watched it buzz.
As it buzzed off, we noticed movement from the hotel. A grey-haired woman was doing her morning exercises, bending over, arms outstretched, then staring up straight again. She repeated it a few times and then disappeared into her room.
A minute or so later, she returned to the sunny spot outside her room, with hand-held weights. She lifted them up and down: above her head, down again. Repeating it a few times. She disappeared into her room again.
A young person emerged from a different room only a few minutes later. Long hair, dark clothes, bare feet.
They moved to a sunny spot - perhaps there’s grass there too. I couldn’t see. Our garage blocks it. They stretched their arms up over their head, reaching for the sky, face in the sun. Arms down, they did a few side bends then proceeded to hop up and down on the spot, hair flipping up and down in a wave to the movement.
I sipped my coffee.
After a few more hops, they went inside. Not before stretching their feet just as they went into their room, placing the out edge of their foot on the ground and stretching their ankle and leg outwards. Awkward but satisfying.
I pondered how my own body needs stretching now, every morning. I can feel a few old netball injuries on waking. Sore muscles from standing on tiles all day. Life. The woman was doing a good job of stretching out her aches and pains. The young person preventing them, perhaps.
I wasn't expecting this flurry of morning activity. It was amusing. Interesting. A glimpse of another’s life. Of several lives connected only by chance—the chance of staying at the same small hotel in Mariehamn. They don’t even know they’re connected. It’s me who’s made that happen—as I sit on my balcony, observing.
I miss the little strip of forest. The protection I felt is now lost. Our apartment block backyard; a little more open and exposed.
Apparently, that’s progress.
Not for me, though. It feels like a little bit of something special has been taken away. I know it was theirs, to do with what they like but I can’t help feeling like swapping a little piece of forest for a bitumen car park is losing rather than gaining.
I cried when they cut the forest down. I call it a forest but it was really a strip of trees not more than 15 metres wide from the street side but stretching back to another strip of trees that meet it where our apartment’s strip of land ends.
I took many photos of the sun setting behind that strip of trees. Watching the sky turn pink, the clouds billowing in the sky.
For a while, I felt sad and angry about the little forest strip. My beloved jackdaws left, feeling too exposed to bring up their babies beside the empty house in our backyard. Luckily, I can still look straight out from our balcony—south—to tree tops, green grass and the abandoned house in our backyard. It’s just the view to the right that’s changed.
It seems acceptance is what I need to embrace. For the things I cannot change. For the ‘progress’ humanity seems to love so much. Let’s hope the new trees the hotel owners have planted grow fast and tall!
Stay well,
Lisa x
In the words of Joni Mitchell - they paved paradise and put up a parking lot! They were still building the extension last year on my visit. The new reality is a bitter pill to swallow! 😕
Oh that is a shame, that leafy, wooded street looked just beautiful. The view of the new human fauna seems a cold compensation.