An open mind

As the fields roll by, and time in Estonia passes, stalky buckwheat has come into creamy flower. and the canola is fading out into green. Baby storks are half grown, and look too big for their nests. Lilac, orchid and dandelion flowers have run their course, and in the forests wild strawberries are ripe and juicy, blueberries make their appearance in forests, and cloudberries have in bogs. In one pine stand, we find enough chanterelles for a hearty dinner, and, in another, more of these striking yellow fungi.

As I write, fields of barley have turned bright gold and then harvested, cranes march in the stubble, bright red poppies and blue-purple cornflowers appear in the wheat, and cream-coloured meadow-sweet flowers on roadside verges. Summer has reached its peak. We pick strawberries and blueberries in a pine forest near the sea, keeping an eye out for ticks, horse-flies, and poisonous snakes.

After nearly two months of travel, I feel a part of this land and am ready for a sign, something to bind me closer to 17,000km away from where most of this life is lived. We pour whipped cream over berries for dinner as the sun edges closer towards the horizon.

A grey-rust coloured bird with wings like a magpie picks at the ground, lean in body with a large, coloured crest and a long tail. Vaenukägu, a meadow-cuckoo, says my host, and almost at the same time, I say, “hoopoe”, a bird I have read about but never seen. They are the same, and this Eurasian bird of mythology and otherworldly travel is rare in Estonia, making between 5 and 20 nests in any year. The Eurasian hoopoe arrives every year in May and leaves in August, spending the winter in or near the horn of Africa.

In Sufi lore, the hoopoe takes a gathering of birds of many species on an arduous journey to seek a lord to rule over them, the Simurgh, a giant bird of Persian mythology. After repeated hardships, 30 birds are all that are left after crossing seven ranges of high mountains and seven deep valleys. At the top of Mt Qaf, the hoopoe beckons the birds forward to see into a lake. Exhausted, the birds get the shock of their lives, for all they see is their own reflections – 30 birds, and this is also a meaning of si murgh in the Persian language. In their search for God and guidance, they find that their quest resided the whole time within themselves.

Armed with these thoughts and red wine, we light a fire, watch the sun set and continue talking and gazing into the flames until 1.30am, as the sun slowly hints at its return to daylight. At this time of year the nights here do not get really dark; in two months I have seen not a single star.

A repeated theme in our conversations is that an open mind invites the unlooked for - in travel, and in life. The universe’s energy enters body and soul, and transforms, as the conscious and sub-conscious allow. I am reminded of a line from an Antonio Machado poem, Cantares, made into song by Catalán singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat: Caminante, no hay camino. Se hace camino al andar.

“O pilgrim, there is no path ahead in life, you make your path as you go.”

This has happened many times during this trip, and a day on bicycles on the island of Vormsi offers proof. This lies in the northwestern part of Estonia known as Noarootsi, where a long-standing Swedish colony fled the Second World War, and Estonians have gradually repopulated the area.

Lunch is fish burgers and coffee from a food truck, and then a gentle ride in warm sunshine; a clean aroma of roadside junipers and a heady one of wild strawberries in pine forest add to a sense of calm. A grass snake crosses our path - black sinuous body and yellow dashes behind each ear – vanishing into the undergrowth, a good omen we decide.

Arriving at a lighthouse, we find it is closed on Mondays and wonder how to spend an hour at this remote stretch of limestone coast. A woman approaches from the beach and says she’s off-duty but has a key, and so we climb 180 spiral stairs of boilerplate built in the mid-1800s to enjoy the typical Estonian view of flatness and forest spreading in all directions, and an endless grey sea. Another coffee from a tiny café opened for us, and then to return on our two-wheelers to Sviby port, and we make the ferry back to the mainland with a couple of minutes to spare.

Upupa epops in the Estonian language is also toonetutt, “crested bird of the underworld”. Its popping call is said to be a harbinger of death, for the hearer or someone close by. Like other birds in various mythologies, the toonetutt travels between this world and the spirit world, a bird shaman that opens the entry of the magical into everyday life, or something much less favourable.

In not hearing any call from the hoopoe, it seems we narrowly escaped a grim fate.

Reprinted in 2026, Mart Mäger’s 1969 classic Linnud rahva keeles ja meeles, or “Birds in Estonian language and mind” describes the hoopoe’s call as a clear “up, up, up”, as if the bird had human voice. Its call is associated in Estonian folklore with troubles and misfortune, including poverty, conflict, crop failure, hunger and famine, and a portent of a death of a person or of livestock, especially if heard near a farm.

“In Estonian folklore, the hoopoe is regarded as an ominous bird rather than a benevolent one; its symbolism in Estonia is closely tied to death and the spirit world,” (Chat GPT). “In Estonia, its enduring association with death and the underworld made it one of the country's most ominous birds in traditional folklore.”

I can do no better than to cultivate an open mind as I drive lazily towards Tallinn the following day, passing beaches of singing sands, and sighting along the way beautifully restored farmsteads, a centuries old wooden church, and the Treppoja, the stepping brook.