A Hockey Town In The Forest
We are shaped by the stories we grow up with. The characters in our books can feel more like friends than fiction. Their stories powerful enough to mold our beliefs and what we choose to fight for as adults. I read about that in an Adam Grant book a few years ago and it’s stuck with me. I don’t remember which of his books, I think Originals, but I catch myself thinking about that often. As a Millennial? I’m part of The Harry Potter Generation.
J.K. Rowling created so much more than a fictional world about wizards. She created a global cultural moment in time that continues to resonate. Whether you embrace the wizarding world or not, you cannot avoid the influence of her characters. Next our generation read more stories, including The Hunger Games and Divergent. And now? We are a generation that came of age believing in fighting for the underdog. In standing up because it’s the right thing to do. And that heroes can come from anywhere.
But then there are the stories we experience later in life. The ones we didn’t get to read when we were kids. Either because we weren’t exposed to them in childhood, or they didn’t exist yet. Not every story will change your perspective on the world. But some books hold stories so great that they pull you into their pages. You don’t just read stories like that. You become them. You connect so deeply with the characters that you live every moment when they do.
Over the past few years, one writer has pulled me in so completely every time that even my vocabulary has changed. I’m positive his stories have influenced my cadence and sentence structure when I write. My stories have more fragments than they would have a few years ago. A long sentence. Then short sentences that punch to elicit an emotion in the reader.
I don’t know that I’ll ever again see bridges just as bridges. Each bridge has its own story of who built it, who it connects, and who’s stood at its railing wondering what happens next.
I’ve replaced baking soda with bicarbonate of soda, and I always say it as prim and properly as I can. I also use it for more than baking now. Because Britt-Marie was right about how well it cleans nearly everything.
And bang is no longer just a sound. It’s a refrain from a story about a hockey town in the forest. A story about underdogs, heroes, and standing up because it’s the right thing to do.
Hockey will forever be my favorite sport. There will always be something that feels like home in the smells and sounds of an ice rink. They are the same no matter the level of the league or the size of the rink. Cheap concessions stand snacks mixed with mildly burnt coffee and powdered hot chocolate. Skate blades scraping and gliding on ice, sticks clanging and pucks banging off the boards. The soft chill in air rising from the freshly Zamboni-ed ice.
Add in that winter is my favorite season and the forest is my preferred sort of nature, and I feel right at home in the background world Fredrik Backman created when he wrote the stories of Beartown. I’ve been a resident in Beartown since my first five minutes visiting, and I’m grateful he wrote three books filled with countless stories of the town’s people. My favorite part, other than all of it? The hockey town in the forest could be any town, anywhere.
Beartown is a story about hockey. But it’s also a story that isn’t about hockey at all. It’s a story about people. About the best and the worst in all of us. About the dominos after each choice we make. How our actions can help put someone back together while they shatter someone else. About how connected we are to each other, even when we’re strangers.
It’s a story that will make you laugh loudly and give you characters to root for. It’s a story that will make you cry tears of joy, pride, and anguish. The stories of Beartown will break your heart, time and time again. But they are stories that will also give you hope. Hope that underdogs can become heroes. Hope that people will always find the courage to stand up, even when they are risking everything, simply because it’s the right thing to do.
