The Journey of "To Build a Home"

For a whole year, my partner Ari and I lived a nomadic life — driving through the countryside in our van, Emma, living here and there, always wherever our hearts took us. It was a mix of longing for a life in nature and the freedom I had dreamed of back in my university days. But there was another reason for our journey: the search for a place to call home.

The Dream of a Little House in Nature

Ari and I met three years ago during our semester abroad in Norway.
He’s from Switzerland, I’m from Germany — with roots in Denmark. When, after graduation, the question arose of where we wanted to live together, my long-held dream of van life resurfaced.
Spending a year on the road, moving from place to place, always staying where it felt right, seemed like the perfect way to find our place — the one that would feel like home from the very first moment.

Our journey began in Norway. After a month of traveling in our van, we rented a small cabin up north, near the Lofoten Islands, for two months.
Autumn was at its most beautiful: the mountains bathed in golden light, leaves dancing in the wind, and northern lights painting the sky. From the cabin windows, we could see straight across the fjord to the mountains.
It looked exactly like the house we had so often imagined as our dream home.
And yet, in the midst of that dream, something was still missing — the feeling of truly having arrived. The feeling of home.

A Colorful Life in Community

October turned rough. Endless rain and storms kept us awake at night, and we missed our families and friends so much that we eventually packed up again. Maybe life in the middle of nowhere wasn’t really for us. Maybe it was people we were missing — the sense of connection that makes a place feel like home.
Our search took us south to Portugal, driven by the idea of trying something entirely different: community living. For several months, we stayed in different communities, recharging our social batteries and meeting fascinating people with unique ways of life. But once again, the feeling of having found home didn’t come.
Ironically, we began longing for the very life we had tried to escape. Out of that sense of restlessness — and a yearning for stability — we spontaneously rented a small house again in July and set off for the place where it had all begun: Norway.

A New Painting Takes Shape

On our way north, I began a new painting. I was sitting in the dunes of northern Denmark, my father’s homeland — a place full of childhood memories.

Would this become our home?
Like every other option we had considered, it came with its flaws. There was always something: too expensive, too high taxes, too little nature, too much nature. Move to another country when I had just begun finding my footing as a self-employed artist in Germany? What if I couldn’t build a life there? What if we hit a dead end — lost the freedom I had longed for and couldn’t get it back?
My thoughts were spinning. A thousand voices argued inside my head until, surrounded by moss and pine tops, I dipped my hands into the paint. Suddenly everything went quiet. Only the rustle of the trees, the shimmer of sunlight on the heather blossoms, and my colors remained. As always, I didn’t really know what I was painting. I simply followed the colors beneath my fingertips — unaware that this painting would one day help us find our home.

The Story of a Beaver

On our way to Norway, during a walk in the woods, we spotted a beaver in a river. We were amazed — beavers are usually so shy that wildlife photographers wait for days just to catch a glimpse. But this one didn’t seem to care about us at all. He calmly swam in circles, even though he had clearly noticed us. With every lap, he came a little closer, and at times it felt as if he was looking straight into our eyes. I got goosebumps — the moment was pure magic.
The image of the beaver wouldn’t leave me. His small black eyes kept appearing in my mind and eventually found their way onto my canvas. One shape in the colors reminded me of the river where we had seen him — and I couldn’t help but paint him. It took several tries: first I painted him swimming, then beside a tree. But nothing felt right. Only when I placed him at the riverbank, half out of the water as if leaning forward, did the painting feel complete. He was looking up at a deer I had painted on the opposite bank. The deer bent down toward him, as if listening to his words. The beaver had something to say — I just didn’t know what yet.

A Little House in the Woods

Some time later, as I looked at the painting again, wondering if anything was still missing, I noticed a shape in the colors that reminded me of a rooftop. A memory surfaced: a day in Sweden, when Ari and I had stumbled upon a tiny red wooden cabin deep in the forest during a hike. We stood on the doorstep and imagined what it would be like to live there — sitting by the fireplace, surrounded by the crackling of wood and birdsong.
“Maybe one day we’ll just find it,” I said to Ari.
“Maybe we’ll be walking through the forest, like now, and suddenly stand right in front of our new home. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
Yes, that was exactly what I wished for most in that moment: to turn a corner and find our home waiting there.

The Beaver’s Message

By now, Ari and I were completely caught up in our search. We kept scrolling through listings for houses, apartments, and plots of land in different countries. We went back and forth between the excitement of building a little house in nature and the longing for family and connection in a lively city. We tried every method to make a decision — from systemic constellations to neurographic drawings, which had always helped me before. But nothing led to clarity.
“I don’t think we’ll ever find it,” I said to Ari one day as we hiked our favorite trail in the fjell and crossed a small river near our cabin. I had hoped he’d say something reassuring, but he seemed lost in thought himself, unsure of what to do next.
As I stepped across the stones in the water, I thought of my nearly finished painting. The beaver appeared in my mind again. I saw him leaning over the riverbank — but unlike in my painting, this time he was holding something out to the deer: a small twig. And suddenly, words formed in my head.
“Home isn’t something you simply find,” the beaver said to the deer in my mind. “It’s something you build.”

To Build a Home

Suddenly I realized that the words I had just spoken to Ari, hoping for reassurance, were the very answer we had been searching for all along. We would never simply stumble upon a place that felt like home from the very start — because home is a feeling that grows over time. It’s something you build.
We had been running in circles, searching for the perfect, easy solution. Looking for an answer that had always been right in front of us — only we hadn’t wanted to see it. Starting anew is never easy. Building something from scratch will always come with fears, doubts, and challenges.
When all doors are open, there isn’t one perfect choice — only many beautiful paths. What matters is taking the first step. Making the decision to walk one of them.
Or, as the beaver in my story says to the deer: to lay the first branch.
“Step by step, branch by branch, what we call home begins to take shape. All we need is the courage to lay the first branch, little deer.”

The Courage to Take the First Step

Finishing the painting was incredibly hard. I didn’t want to paint the last stroke. Somewhere deep inside, I knew that the time had come — that by completing the painting, we would also be making a decision.
It might sound strange, but just a few days after I declared the painting finished and we were once again scrolling through apartment listings, we came across one that made us stop. A charming old apartment in our favorite street in Lucerne — the city where Ari used to live.
And where usually doubt and hesitation crept in immediately, there was only silence for a moment.
“Should we message them?” I asked Ari.
A few typed words later, we had.
We’d spent a year hesitating — and now, it had happened in a split second.
Of course, the doubts returned. But a few days later, the wave of emotions subsided. The storm inside me quieted.
There are still a thousand questions and uncertainties swirling within me, but also a calm certainty that somehow, a path would unfold. There’s always a way — but to see it, you have to start walking.

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