I have never been so grateful to see a gravel track in all my life. After three hours of driving from Karlstad, my partner and I finally turned onto what we hoped was the right lane, only to discover we had been confidently following the sat nav to a farmyard full of extremely judgmental sheep. The farmer, bless him, found the whole thing hilarious and directed us back with gestures that suggested this happens roughly twice a week. Ten minutes later, we crunched up the proper driveway to Branaes Oevre Mattestorp, and I decided then and there that getting slightly lost is simply the price of admission for proper peace and quiet.

The first thing that struck me was the light. Varmaland does this extraordinary thing in summer where the evenings simply refuse to end, and the cottage sat there glowing like someone had left a lamp on inside the landscape itself. It is a traditional wooden place, painted that deep Falun red that makes every Swedish holiday photo look impossibly curated. I half expected a moose to wander past and complete the tableau. Instead, a very ordinary robin hopped across the porch and stared at me with what I can only describe as profound disappointment in my life choices.

We dumped our bags and immediately did what any sensible person would do: absolutely nothing. The cottage has a little wooden deck facing south, and we discovered that two weathered chairs and a patch of afternoon sun constitute everything one actually needs for happiness. My partner fetched a cup of tea. I fetched a book I had been meaning to read for approximately fourteen months. Within twenty minutes, I was deeply involved in reading the same paragraph four times while watching a bumblebee negotiate a flowerpot. This, I reflected, is what people mean when they talk about being present. Or possibly what they mean by early-onset sunstroke. Either way, it felt magnificent.

The following days settled into a rhythm so gentle it barely qualified as rhythm at all. Mornings began with coffee outside, watching mist lift off the nearby fields. We wandered down to the lake at Mattestorp, perhaps ten minutes on foot, where the water was so still it looked like someone had forgotten to press play. I attempted one swim, shrieked at the temperature, and retreated to a rock where I remained for an hour, drying in the sun like a particularly contented lizard. My partner, who possesses actual Scandinavian blood somewhere in their ancestry, stayed in for twenty minutes and emerged looking spiritually renewed. I chose not to take this personally.

What surprised me most was how little I missed doing things. We walked to the village shop once for supplies, nodded at locals who nodded back with the perfect balance of friendliness and leave-me-alone-ness that defines rural Sweden, and returned to our patch of sunshine. I finished my book. I started another. I learned the names of three birds and have already forgotten two of them. On our final evening, we sat on that deck until nearly ten, watching the light fade so slowly it felt like the day was being polite about ending.

I came home with a faint sunburn, a half-read novel, and the certain knowledge that I am a person who requires occasional instruction in doing absolutely nothing at all.