Threshold of Cold

The Weight of Snow.

What happens to the body when it is pushed to its limits?

When perception begins to shift? When strain remains, yet loses its urgency?

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It was -43 °C when we pulled the car over at the edge of Riisitunturi National Park.

The moment I stepped outside, my body reacted to the environment before my mind had even caught up. The cold was already there. Absolute, without transition. It slowed every movement. Two more layers of fabric, two pairs of gloves, balaclava, hat, hood, snowshoes – all in slow motion. Every action gained weight, as if the air itself were resisting.

I left the camera in my backpack. At this temperature, everything seemed to follow its own rules. I carried the spare batteries between layers of wool, close to the remaining warmth.

Even before we started walking, my perception had already turned inward. The body became the centre of attention without any conscious decision.

The reason for this journey went back several years: an article about unique snow formations in northern Finland.

In winter, the landscape becomes something self-contained. Moisture, frost, and wind create tykkylumi. Spruces and pines lose their contours, becoming heavy, rounded, almost corporeal.

I had already travelled to Finnish Lapland twice in search of this extreme state. Without success. The winters had been too warm and too wet. The dense snow formations that once remained stable for weeks had become increasingly rare.

This time, too, there was no preview, no promise, no certainty. Only the decision to try once more. And the vague hope that this year, conditions might align in a way that would reveal the trees in that other reality I had only ever read about.

The Body as Boundary. The first stretch led through a dense stand of spruce trees, still slender at this elevation, reaching sharply into the sky.

The snow absorbed almost every sound. Only the rhythmic crunch beneath the snowshoes endured. My gaze stayed fixed on the ground, on the act of moving forward, always searching for the easiest terrain. The landscape was not a subject, but a space that had to be crossed.

Even the wilderness hut along the trail remained without meaning.

As the elevation increased, the balance between warmth and cold began to shift. Exertion generated heat that could no longer escape through the layers of clothing. Protection and burden became indistinguishable.

The water bottle hung upside down from my backpack. Ice formed along its surface rather than at the opening. Every sip became a brief, cutting interruption. The sensation lingered in my throat for several seconds afterwards.

On the slope, the darkness began to lift – subtly, almost imperceptibly. Light spread across the snow like a slow change in texture. For a moment, the trees appeared in my mind‘s eye. Then vanished again. The environment allowed no thought that did not immediately turn physical.

The Landscape in Sight. At the hilltop, the space opened abruptly. A landscape stripped of anything familiar. No paths. No tracks. No direction.

The tykkylumi trees stood scattered across the slope like silent guardians. Heavy forms, softly contoured. They did not appear to have grown there, but to have emerged.

Snow weighed heavily on their branches, pulling every line downward until contours dissolved into one another. Trunk, crown, and surroundings became one. Something that did not disappear when you looked away, but continued to exist.

The sense of self receded. Not entirely, but enough that it could no longer be heard. The cold remained in my hands, face, and feet, yet slipped out of focus.

The Arctic sun hovered low above the horizon. Its light moved laterally across the terrain, striking each tree differently – some only at their tips, others completely.

In the sky, pink and orange bled into one another before fading into a muted blue. The contrasts did not emerge from light and shadow, but from colour and its gradual transformation.

With every passing minute, a different landscape came into being – not new, only slightly altered.

Standing still, the silence became absolute.

The landscape no longer felt separate from me.

I stopped.

Then I reached for the camera and chose the wide-angle lens. The interplay of surface, form, and light needed space to unfold. The viewfinder became an amplifier, making the environment more immediate.

It remained a kind of seeing that no longer controlled, but participated.

Between Body and Landscape. After sunset, we returned to the hut and stayed by the fire pit.

For a moment, the snowshoes came off our feet.

With stillness, the cold became noticeable again despite the fire. Not as a threat, but as a presence. My toes ached, my fingers stiffened, movements grew heavier.

We ate food roasted over the fire and drank coffee, yet the warmth only spread inward briefly.

Then we made our way up the hill again.

The snow had absorbed our tracks, holding them as shallow impressions in the slope that marked the way back.

The full moon hung above the hill and transformed the landscape once more.

The diffuse twilight glow and soft gradations had disappeared. Instead, shadows and strong contrasts took shape in deep dark blue and neutral white. A reduction that seemed almost too clear to remain real.

Individual trees emerged in the moonlight – massive, almost monumental. Others vanished into the darkness.

Above everything stretched the sky in a new vastness that once again rendered the body insignificant.

There was no longer any distance between seeing and wonder. No sorting, no interpretation, only stillness. And the desire to preserve this moment.

I changed the way I worked: calmer movements, tripod, longer exposures. No trace of the earth’s rotation marked the sky.

The stars remained fixed in place.

Shifting Perception. What remains is not the memory of extreme cold, but a perception in flux.

Strain does not disappear, yet it can recede behind whatever holds the gaze. And sometimes, the boundary between seeing and what is seen dissolves far enough for landscape and body to become one.