On Møn, and the Fleeting Nature of Things

For our short study tour, my core course, Sense of Place in European Literature, stayed in a writer’s residency called Villa Gress, located in the countryside city of Møn, Denmark. As we had been reading eco-conscious, experimental literature, it was only “natural” (ha!) to see about all of this ‘nature’ we had been reading about. 

A short study tour is the first trip that you take with your core course that’s relevant to the class, whether that be exploring some conceptual element of coursework, engaging with field work, etc. As evident by the name, it’s a little shorter than the longer study tour that you do later in the semester. 

Now, the interesting thing about Denmark is that most of the land that is not occupied by people or animals is farmland, “staged” nature, one might say. Compared to other countries, there isn’t much wild game, and much of the land has been or will be cultivated for agriculture or meat raising and production. 

With this in mind, our visit was also occupied with questions of “What is nature? What’s natural?” I suppose we weren’t trying to answer these questions as much as dwell on them.

Wednesday, our arrival day, was full of eating and getting to know one another beyond class. One of the authors whom we had read visited us that night, and we sat in front of the fire as she read her work to us, and we asked questions about it. Then, we took a nature walk outside with a local tour guide, and she tried to show us the world beyond light pollution. 

On Thursday, we went out to see another author we had read, and saw her active project to connect land, animals, and people through a piece of land she had saved from being turned into a building plot. That night, our professor joined us – she had been sick the first day – and we read together. That night, lying in bed, I sadly realized the trip was almost over.

Friday morning. The first light of the day had just broken through, and I could still see the soft dust floating in the midst of the sunshine. I got some coffee, and sat down at the table with my two other classmates who were in the main house with me. As I sipped, I stared at the bust of Ella Gress, after whom the house, Villa Gress is named. 

There was an uncharacteristically large snowstorm in Denmark during the last half of the week we were traveling, and it put a dent in a lot of our plans. After being told our morning and afternoon plans to go out were canceled or changed around, I was probably not as disappointed as I should've been. I would have liked to linger there forever.

Getting on the bus was a bitter affair for me. I knew it was a short trip; all I had to do was reread the name for that, but it had been an amazing couple of days, and surely it wouldn’t hurt to stay a little longer? Listening to the bustling noise back in Copenhagen Central before taking the metro back to my apartment, I thought back on that house, how natural it felt to lean on the kitchen counter in peaceful quiet.