Chuck In Search of Karen Blixen's Grave

Karen Blixen's house at Rungstedlund, outside Copenhagen

How far should a fan go to pay tribute to an author she loves?

According to Chuck, my rascal cat, not far at all.

I had a different idea.

Ever since I’d read Karen Blixen’s memoir Out of Africa and then watched the movie starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, which detailed Karen Blixen’s tumultuous love affair with Denys Finch-Hatton while in Kenya and running a coffee plantation, I’d longed to see her two homes—one in Kenya and the other in her native Denmark.  For me, seeing an author’s home is inspiring. I imagine them in that space writing, creating, and hope that some of their unique talent rubs off on me.

Several years ago I was lucky enough to go on safari in Kenya.  I saw where Karen Blixen lived and worked.  Recently, while traveling around the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, I also had the opportunity of visiting Karen Blixen’s ancestral home—where she was born and raised and where she returned, after her coffee plantation in Africa burned to the ground and she lost her investment.

Kate (me) in Copenhagen train station with Chuck in smart bag

Rungstedlung is approximately 25 minutes by train and a bit more by bus out of Copenhagen.  Her home is now the Karen Blixen Museum, and many of the original rooms are delightfully preserved the way they were when she lived there.

Sign announcing you have reached Karen Blixen's house

So it was exciting to take the trip north of Copenhagen and see her house, and even though it was a half dreary—cloudy, partially rainy day, I didn’t mind. We traipsed through her house and inspected her rooms, visited the part which now housed documents that told the story of her life and then stopped off in the gift shop.

Karen Blixen (not in the flesh) on poster board to greet you!

Chuck, safely squirreled away in my smart bag, bore the entire experience with unlikely quiet reserve.  We were about to leave when I realized that we hadn’t seen Karen Blixen’s gravesite.  Follow the path behind the house, we were told. I couldn’t resist, and Chuck, realizing that the path was likely to be somewhat deserted, knew he’d be let out of the smart bag and allowed to roam around.

Back view of house with pathway leading to grave

We started off down the path, crossed along the back of the house, and quickly, very quickly we entered into a kind of forest, beautiful but very quiet and deserted. With no grave in sight. The guide woman at the desk had clearly said to follow the path.  So we continued to walk.  Hanging from trees were smartly carved cheerfully colored birdhouses, which helped to dispel the gloom.  The drizzle, which had started with our walk, now turned into a downpour.  Chuck sloshed along in front of me.  Still no gravesite.

Path with brightly colored birdhouses

I became suspicious. Why would anyone want to be buried so far away from the house? Had we somehow missed the “clearly marked sign”?   

Then it happened. A black bird appeared in front of us. At first I thought it was an omen. But, no, only trouble because Chuck saw the bird and let loose, his belly dragging behind him as he chased after this poor creature, who for some reason, refused to take flight. Surreal almost. Finally, when it seemed that Chuck was just about to pounce, the bird rose into the air. Chuck, clearly out of breath, didn’t seem too concerned that he’d lost his conquest. And, of course, still no gravesite. We’d been walking up an incline for at least ten minutes.

Marina across the street from where Karen Blixen lives

Chuck gave me one of those looks.  He’d had enough.

I am not one to give up, but Chuck was drenched. The path was turning into mud. And the forest was now the forest primeval.

We turned around and returned to the gift shop.

Yes. Karen Blixen was buried at the top of the hill. Under the giant beech tree. There is a marker.  Perhaps, you did not walk far enough.

Suddenly it didn’t matter anymore.  Instead I’d walked the path I imagined she’d walked a hundred times.  And that was enough for me.

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Chuck Has Movie Fever - Out of Africa

While Chuck, my rascal cat, and I were on safari in Africa, I couldn’t resist visiting the house where Karen Blixen, known for her fab auto-biography Out of Africa lived in Nairobi.  I enjoy paying tribute to favorite authors by seeing where they used to live or seeing the landscapes that inspired them.  

Over the years I’ve been to Mark Twain's house in Hartford, Connecticut, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's house in Salem, Massachusetts, and I’ve seen the moors that inspired Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, to name a few.  And although I know that so much of writing happens inside the imagination, I scrutinize the houses and the furniture, the grounds and the landscapes, as if there’s some magic that I can imbibe and take away with me that will make me a better writer.

This time I was inspired by the movie–Out of Africa starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, which had been based on part of Karen Blixen's life. As a young woman, she'd  came to Africa to marry a Baron, but had ended up also falling in love with a big game hunter, starting a coffee plantation that failed, and when her lover was killed tragically in a plane crash, returning to Norway, where she took the pen name Isak Dinesen.

Movie poster for Out of Africa courtesy of Wikipedia

I wanted to see this woman’s house.  I wanted to walk in her back yard.  I wanted to imagine myself living there–and yeah, I can hear what you’re thinking–as if I were the star of that Hollywood movie.

And you're absolutely right.

Her life was both grand and tragic.  I suspect that it was the years she lived in Africa that influenced her to write great literature.  Once she left Nairobi, she never went back, but Africa was never far from her thoughts.

When I first read her memoir, Out of Africa, published in 1937,  I was awe struck by her opening line, “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.” Back then I tried to imagine those hills in the distance and how it would feel to gaze on their majesty everyday.

In Nairobi, when I stood in Karen Blixen’s back yard, I gazed into the distance and stared at those hills, hardly believing I was actually there.

I imagined that no matter what had happened to her when she lived in that house–the death of her lover, the destruction of her coffee plantation, the news that she’d contracted a near deadly disease (syphyllis)–all stuff of great drama, the hills remained a constant for her.

In truth, she’d written that she loved those hills and she was heard to say that if people could move mountains, those were the ones she would have taken with her back to Norway.

I love knowing that and knowing that I was there.

Today Karen Blixen’s house is a tourist stop, and you can see why when you walk through the rooms, decorated with a combination of original period furniture and props used from the movie that were donated to the house. Oh, she was a pretty fair writer, too. 

You can’t walk through the house unescorted, which is problematic for me because the tour goes much too fast.   I can’t absorb my surroundings that quickly, and I like to look at everything and imagine myself in each room, imagine how her day would have been, and then how I would live each day in each room.  So I’m always the laggard on every tour.

And then, there’s my rascal cat Chuck.

He’s stuffed inside my smart bag, itching to poke his whiskered face out and get a peek.  All he wants is to be let loose so he can sniff around.

When the house tour is concluded, people are free to wander around the back yard.  When the crowds thin out, I finally allow Chuck out of the smart bag, and at first he sniffs around, more sedate than usual, until he discovers the arbor along the side of the house.  Shady, stone-terraced and dripping with beautiful flowers, it’s perfect for Chuck.  He can’t resist munching on some of the grasses nearby.

Of course, this house and the hills mean nothing to Chuck and everything to me. I manage to scoop him up, seconds before the gift shop woman emerges just to make sure everything is okay.

As I walk away, I think of my first book Wild Point Island recently published. It’s too late to add Ngong Hills to the background, but then I wonder if someday some young author won’t pilgrimage to my house . . . and bring their rascal cat along.