Latvia

Blanketed in forests and nestled by the Baltic Sea, Latvia is weathered both literally and figuratively. Wood breathes and bends everywhere, both living and turned to purpose, when it quickly acquires a leathered patina. Blueberries mix with young pines along the River Gauja, and spiders weave their elegance at dawn among the hardy shrubs of the Kemeri Bog. Immersing yourself in this extraordinary environment deepens your respect for the perseverance of our planet – and its people.

While its population seeps away to other Nordic lands in search of better livelihoods, Latvia retains its cultural heritage and spunk. Visitors from Russia are no longer welcome despite their presence from Soviet times, and the language is forbidden in the workplace. The concrete Victory Monument of Riga, determined by authorities to “have no value,” was sent crashing down during my stay, captured in dramatic video footage. Some are wary of taunting, others not. Across town, the director of the Paul Stradins Museum of the History of Medicine hangs an enormous banner of Putin with a skull face, angling it towards the Russian embassy for maximum effect.

At Ziedlejas near Sigulda, those who treasure the art of pirts indulge in a private sauna ritual to replenish body, mind, and spirit. Pirts masters soap and massage their way with swaths of faded maple leaves and honey, pouring decadent amounts of water in alternating (or even simultaneous) deluges of hot and cold. The lull of chimes and prolonged heat evoke a trance-like, hallucinogenic state, with some claiming to have seen miracles. There are glass pirts and smoke pirts, but the architecturally-splendid lanolin pirts is best, where garden flowers float on an icy plunge pool and an enormous hammock invites guests to drift to sleep in the falling snow during winter.

When you arrive some day, dear traveler, I invite you to find the ladder that descends into the River Daugava in Kipsala, known only to locals. Dare to shed your clothes and feel the bracing water that begins in Russia, flows through Belarus, and now carries you along its current before reaching the Baltic Sea. Create your own story of wood, fire, and water, whether in summer or winter, peace or war, abundant or fragile times.

Here’s my photo essay on Latvia.