The trouble with booking a cabin in March is that you half expect winter, half hope for spring, and end up with something that cannot quite commit to either. That is precisely the mood I carried with me on the drive down from Oslo to Drobak, squinting through windscreen wipers that seemed to have developed a rhythm all their own, more jazz improvisation than steady beat.

I had packed with the optimism of someone who once saw a daffodil in February and decided winter was finished. My bag contained one proper coat, several jumpers I would not need, and shoes that would prove spectacularly unsuitable. The SatNav took me through Akershus countryside that could not decide whether to be dramatic or merely damp. Fields sat in that particular brown-green holding pattern of early Norwegian spring, snow retreating to hedgerows like a shy child at a party.

The mishap, because there is always one, arrived at a petrol station just outside Nesoddtangen. I had stopped for coffee and a vague sense of preparedness, and in my caffeine-deprived state managed to lock my keys in the boot while retrieving a packet of biscuits. There I stood, in a thin jacket that had seemed adequate in London, watching sleet begin to fall on a rental car that now contained everything I needed except access to it. The petrol station attendant, a man whose patience suggested this was not his first tourist, helped me contact the rental company with the resigned air of someone who had seen this particular film before. An hour and a half, one expensive phone call, and a considerable amount of self-directed muttering later, I was mobile again, biscuits intact but dignity somewhat bruised.

By the time I reached the turning for Ytre Hallangen, the light was doing that extraordinary thing it does in this part of Norway at this time of year - not quite fading, but shifting, becoming liquid and unpredictable. The cabin sat among trees that still carried the bare patience of winter, though here and I noticed the faint swelling of buds, the slight thickening of branches that speaks of change held in reserve. The air smelled of cold water and something greener underneath, something waiting.

The key was where promised, the door opened with that particular resistance of a building that has settled into its landscape over years. Inside, the cabin carried the faint chill of somewhere unoccupied, but also that particular quality of Norwegian wooden construction - the way it seems to breathe, to exist in conversation with the weather rather than defiance of it. I found myself moving slowly, almost respectfully, aware that I was entering a space shaped by seasons I had not yet witnessed.

The windows framed a view that made my locking-the-keys incident feel, if not worthwhile, then at least properly humbling. The Oslofjord lay in that grey-silver state of early spring, not frozen but not inviting, the islands sitting low and patient. A layer of cloud sat low enough to touch the treetops on the far shore, and I understood suddenly why people return to places like this through the turning year - not despite the uncertainty of the season, but because of it.

I made tea with hands still cold from the journey, and sat with the peculiar stillness that comes from being somewhere that asks nothing of you but presence. March in Akershus is not a time for swimming or sailing or any of the obvious summer pleasures. It is a time for noticing - the particular quality of light on water that has not yet warmed, the sound of a woodpecker somewhere in the trees, the way the cabin's wooden walls seem to hold the memory of winters past and the promise of those to come.

The sleet returned as evening came on, tapping against windows that suddenly felt very comforting. I had brought books, intentions of brisk walks, plans for productive activity. Instead I found myself simply there, in the in-between time, in the in-between place, grateful for mishaps that had slowed me down enough to arrive properly. The season had not yet decided what it wanted to be, and for once, neither had I.