The writer sits at the table and looks at the blank sheet of paper. She holds her pen in her hand. Sometimes she nibbles at it, then she puts it down again with a sigh and stares through the window at the sky. There is the writer, sitting at the table. She looks at the grain in the wood, she looks at the white sheet of paper lying in front of her – so different from the sturdy, light brown wood of the desk. This light, delicate sheet of paper: where does it come from?

It must have come from far away. The writer closes her eyes and imagines the tree from whose fibres the sheet of paper was made. She imagines the woody odour that must have been produced during the manufacturing process. Before this tree was felled, it stood in a forest. In America or perhaps Europe? Scandinavia? Where did it stand, where were its neighbours? Which country did it call home?

The writer sits at her desk with her eyes closed and imagines the forest in which her tree, the tree of the sheet of paper, was felled. The trees are eerily large, like the trees she had seen in Sweden. Her thoughts travel on and on, along an imaginary road, an imaginary path. There are trees everywhere as far as the eye can see. Trees and more trees. The writer sits up straight, her back hurts, the office chair is not properly adjusted. She keeps her eyes closed. She tries to concentrate on it even better, she tries to imagine the smell of the forest. Resinous, tart, somehow almost sweet. Perhaps there is also snow in the air, soft and fresh and gentle, although winter in the north is anything but gentle. Now she can feel the snow, the snowflakes falling gently on her head and yet soaking her more and more. And then she hears the crunching underfoot and she is there. All around her are tall fir trees and other conifers, the sky is grey and white and blue. Even the snow seems almost blue-veined: blue veins ploughing through the cold white. And it is cold, bitterly cold. It's so cold that it's hard to believe it's summer. So cold, summer seems far away, on another continent, in another world. Do summer and sun even exist? You suspect it, you hope it, but you don't really believe it. Summer seems too far away to exist anywhere at all.

The writer puts one foot in front of the other. She is freezing. There is a crunch and a crack. The icy snow breaks up into its individual pieces. An idyll in her thoughts, but ruthless in reality. She walks up to a tree and places her hand on the trunk: grooves and paths. Sticky resin now clings to her fingers. She wipes her hand on her trousers and only makes it worse: now her trousers and half her palm are sticky. She looks around. The trees are huge and dark. In contrast to this brilliant white snow, the trunks look almost black. The crowns, on the other hand, are dark green, moss green, forest green. Eternal. "A tree like this seems eternal," she thinks to herself. These trees seem as if nothing and nobody could harm them, as if they had always been here and would always remain here. Eternal giants that don't care about time or protracted, harsh cold. Eternal giants that outlast the weather, people and decades. And exactly one of these trees was used for her sheet of paper.

She opens her eyes. For this sheet of paper on her desk: no grooves, no resin, no grain or annual rings. Just white white white, like the snow that will eventually melt and the nothing she has written. She puts the pen aside and sighs. The writer gets up and spends her day doing anything but writing, writing, paper and stories. She takes her mind off things. In the evening, she returns to the sheet of paper, switches on the desk lamp, takes out her colour box and dips her brush into the glass of water. She squeezes white out of the tube and mixes it with a little sky blue: the snow. She draws blue veins across the white paper and sprinkles white on top: the falling snowflakes. Then dark, darker and darker for the trunks. They should look strong, old and beautiful. She paints grooves in the trunks and trees standing close together. The trees stand close together as if they were offering each other protection, watching over each other. The trees as eternal guardians, whispering secret things to each other and filling the silent, muffled winter forest with their voices alone. She finds that a beautiful image. Now the crowns are still missing. She chooses any green from her colour box, it should be rich and majestic. This mystical, calming forest green that always remains, whatever the season and whatever the weather. Green that fades into green. Outward strokes and dabbed needles, sometimes this green, then that one on top and mixed together. Finally, she sprinkles over a little blue and white for the remaining snowflakes and that's it. She puts the brush in the water glass, leans back for a moment and now she is happy with herself. The writer cleans her brushes, empties out the water and puts the painting materials away in her desk drawer. She goes to bed and leaves the sheet of paper to dry overnight.

The next morning, she looks at her work and hangs the sheet above her bed. Let the forest, let the trees watch over her as if she were one of their own: eternally existing, calm and strong. As if she was exactly where she should be every day, completely at peace within herself. And with every day she would try to be more like that, to be constant, to be herself and powerful.