Last Monday I drove for 250 kms. A beautiful early winter's sunny day. I drove along pleasant roads with just light traffic in a far more modern and luxurious car than my childhood memories evoked. The journey was far from uneventful as I travelled through the unending assault of magnificence that is the nature of this,my adopted country,Sweden.

On such a longish solitary journey one could be forgiven for finding it a little boring. Children today need a portable Dvd player,hand held game consol,or something similar in order to deal with these longer journeys. Adults console themselves with cd players, even MP3's.

This journey began whilst the frost-fingerprints still lay upon the ground, clothing everything in a mystical hue,hinting at the fine subtlety of nature's intelligence.Most surely nature knows what she is doing and there is a rationale of rest and rebirth that underscores all of her methodologies.

It was not long before I settled in to a kind of rhythm. It was like that half-dreamy awareness that assumes dominance as you listen to some great symphony or love song. A harmony enters into the consciousness. The music of these meandering moments was a visual melody as,almost at each swing in the road,new crescendoes of colour and form fraternised with my feelings.

Half-toned frost shaded tree groups surrendered to large expanses of sun-sparkled forests.Lush full autumnal green meadows capitulated to white crested sunshielded slopes. From one forested area to the next each forest seemed framed with it's own personality and within each forest individual trees pronounced themselves with a vocabulary of uniqueness that even as I traveled could not be ignored. Why was that tree at that angle? Was that one Silver Birch flirting amongst that group of Pine trees? The top two or so meters of that tree bent almost at right angles to it's trunk?

Above me a clear blue sky to the west held that golden brilliance that is the pivot around which all else functions.It's authority subdued by it's lessened presence at this time of the year was nevertheless still evident upon the small cotton-wool stranded clouds that dared to venture into the western sky. Their timidity underscored by the grey-blue density of the gathering storm in the eastern sky, creating a counterpoint, a descant to the melody of the land.

The further I journeyed the more the rhythm and melody of nature rose in volume within me. The feeling of not wanting this journey to end, of somehow being adrift on a cloud myself, grew and grew within me.

I reached my destination quite a while before I reached the place to which I was actually traveling. It was a recognition so powerful as to still remain palpably present some 24 hours later.

We are surrounded,all the time, everywhere, with blessings of beauty so enormous,so incalculable in their effect upon our inner self that it is only when we have released the reality of their presence from our grasp that we are overtaken by the sheer heavenliness of what we have experienced.

As our spirit sighs with the extravagance of all this individualised caress of creativity we are simply left in wonderment.