The thing about driving to Sjusjoen is that you think you've prepared. You've got your Norwegian hire car, your offline maps, and that smug confidence that comes from having watched one too many YouTube videos about winter driving. What you don't prepare for is the petrol station sandwich.

I'd stopped at a Shell somewhere past Lillehammer, hungry and overconfident, and bought something claiming to be a "luxury prawn baguette." Reader, it was not luxury. It was not even recognisably prawn. But I ate the whole thing anyway, because that's what you do on holiday - make terrible decisions and commit to them fully. This becomes relevant later, when I'm winding through the forest roads towards our cabin and suddenly realise that "luxury prawn baguette" and hairpin bends do not mix. I'll spare you the details, but let's just say I got very well acquainted with a layby shaped like a frozen mushroom, and arrived at the cabin forty minutes later with a newfound humility and a desperate need for ginger tea.

The cabin itself sat among snow-heavy pines, red-painted and unassuming, the sort of place that looks like it should have a troll in the garden. My partner had already been there two days with the kids, and I found them in a state of advanced cabin cosiness - board games everywhere, wool socks, the smell of something cinnamon-based. "You missed the turn twice," my daughter said, not looking up from her card game. I didn't bother explaining about the sandwich.

What struck me first was the silence. Not empty silence, but the thick, padded quiet of deep snow and empty forest. You could hear your own heartbeat if you stood still long enough. The cabin had that particular Norwegian practicality - everything worked, nothing was fussy, the heating was set to "actually warm" rather than British "we're pretending this is sufficient." I stood at the window with my terrible tea and watched the light fade across the ski trails, feeling that particular relief of finally being somewhere else.

The next morning, determined to redeem myself, I set out for what I intended to be a brief wander. The plan was simple: follow the marked trail, take some photos, return for waffles. But here's the thing about Norwegian forests in winter - everything looks like a trail, and nothing is. I took a wrong turn somewhere near a frozen stream, chasing what I thought was a path marker but turned out to be a reflective bit of litter on a birch tree. Classic.

The getting lost, though. That's where the magic happened. I found a small frozen lake I'd never seen on any map, perfectly circular, with a single ice-fishing hut at its edge. An old chap in a fluorescent jacket waved me over, wordlessly offered me coffee from a thermos that had clearly seen decades of service, and we sat there watching his line. No shared language beyond gestures and the universal nod of "cold, isn't it?" I never got his name. I stayed twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, then found my way back by following my own footprints in the snow, like some Arctic Hansel without the breadcrumbs.

That became the pattern of the week. The planned walks were fine. The unplanned ones were everything. A clearing where moose had bedded down, the hollowed snow still warm when I found it. A shed selling homemade brown cheese from an honesty box, the sort of place no review site would ever capture. The time I followed what I thought was a shortcut back from the shop and ended up at a husky kennel, where the dogs sang me the entire song of their people until the owner emerged, laughing, to point me toward the actual path.

There's something about being slightly incompetent in a landscape that rewards it. Back home, getting lost is failure. Here, it felt like the point. The forest doesn't care about your itinerary. The snow hides yesterday's tracks by morning. You have to pay attention differently, read the light, notice where the birch trees thin, trust that you'll find your way or that someone with a better thermos will help you.

By the end of the week, I'd stopped checking my phone for routes. I took the wrong turning deliberately sometimes, just to see. Once I found nothing but more trees and had to retrace my steps in deepening twilight, heart going a bit faster than necessary. Even that felt honest, somehow. A small reminder that not everything needs to be optimised.

On the last evening, I stood again at the cabin window, watching the ski trails. My daughter joined me, still in her wool socks, still not looking up from whatever she was doing. "Did you have a good holiday?" she asked, which is the sort of direct question children ask when adults are being too reflective. I thought about the sandwich, the mushroom layby, the nameless fisherman, the singing huskies, the nothing-clearing where I'd stood and simply breathed.

"Yeah," I said. "I got a bit lost."

She nodded, as if this explained everything worth knowing. And perhaps it did.