I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to unlock the wrong cabin. There I stood in the snow at Sjusjoen, jiggling a key that clearly had no intention of cooperating, while a very patient Norwegian man watched from his window with the kind of expression you reserve for tourists who have got themselves into entirely predictable pickles. Turned out my actual place was three doors down and considerably less occupied by strangers. I waved an apology, he raised his coffee mug in what I choose to believe was solidarity rather than mockery, and I trudged off to begin my proper arrival.

The journey up from Oslo had already set the tone. I'd been smug about my hire car's winter tyres right up until I missed the turning for Sjusjoen and found myself on a road that grew progressively narrower and more committed to its destination than I was to mine. The sat nav had given up and gone silent, which I initially interpreted as judgment. But that wrong turn became the making of the trip. I ended up on a forest track that opened suddenly onto a frozen lake I'd never have found otherwise. The ice was so perfectly, absurdly flat that I stopped the car and just stood there like a lemon, breathing air that felt practically medicinal after London.

My cabin, once I actually located it, turned out to be one of those red wooden places that look exactly as a Norwegian cabin should. The kind of red that makes you feel festive even when you're exhausted and slightly embarrassed. Inside smelled of pine and something I couldn't identify, possibly decades of contented holidays. I made the rookie error of cranking the wood burner up to maximum immediately, then spent the first evening in a vest and shorts with all the windows open, which felt financially and environmentally wasteful but personally necessary.

The next morning I decided to embrace getting lost properly. Sjusjoen is cross-country skiing territory, apparently famous for it, though my skiing credentials begin and end with a school trip to the Cairngorms where I spent more time horizontal than vertical. I hired equipment from a place near the cabin, nodded confidently at instructions I didn't understand, and set off on what I believed was a marked trail. It wasn't. Or rather it was, but for something considerably more advanced than my flailing competence.

I found myself in a stretch of forest so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat, which was admittedly elevated. The trees were weighted with snow in that deliberate, artistic way that makes you suspect nature of showing off. Then I noticed a small clearing with a frozen stream and what looked like an old woodshed, slightly collapsed, being slowly reclaimed. No sign, no path to it, nothing to indicate anyone came here deliberately. I sat on a rock that was probably a terrible idea in January and ate the orange I'd packed. It was the best orange of my life. I have no explanation for this.

Getting found again took longer than I care to admit. I followed my own ski tracks back until they crossed someone else's, followed those until I recognised a landmark, and eventually emerged near a small frozen pond where a local was walking his dog with the relaxed pace of someone who had never once tried to enter the wrong property. He pointed me toward the main trail without being asked, which suggests my general demeanour communicated lost foreigner quite effectively.

That evening I cooked badly with ingredients from a supermarket I'd found by similarly accidental navigation. The cabin's kitchen had a view of darkness and occasional headlights from distant cabins, each one feeling like a small connection to other people enjoying their own versions of solitude. I burned the first attempt, salvaged the second, and ate feeling genuinely pleased with myself in a way that rarely happens at home.

The mishaps didn't stop, exactly. I spent one afternoon following what I thought was a shortcut to a viewpoint and ending up at a snow-covered car park for a summer-only trailhead, completely deserted and faintly apocalyptic. I had a snowball fight with myself, which I lost. Another time I took a wrong turning on a drive and found a small lake with a single bench, no name, no indication anyone had ever sat there except that someone clearly had, repeatedly, because the snow was worn down in a pattern that suggested regular contemplation.

Each accident became the point. The planned things were fine, perfectly pleasant, but the wrong turns delivered something I hadn't known to want. There's a particular quality to finding something without looking for it, a lightness that searching can't replicate. I kept thinking I'd remember this, that I'd apply this lesson elsewhere, though I suspect I won't. We forget the obvious quickly. But sitting in that cabin on my final evening, slightly sore from unaccustomed exercise and thoroughly lost in the best way, I felt briefly wise in a manner that probably doesn't survive the return flight.

I left the key in the proper lock this time, double-checked the number, and drove away still slightly uncertain of my route. The sat nav stayed quiet longer than necessary, and I didn't mind. Some wrong turns you keep taking deliberately, just to see what turns up.