A summer evening at Kolsnaren – and why I'm already starting to think about your autumn kickoff
Jenny and I sat on the dock last night and watched the sun set over the fields and talked about nothing in particular, and a little bit about everything, as you do on a summer evening. It was one of those evenings where everything feels slow in the best way, the seagulls had gone to bed, the smell of freshly cut grass lingered from the afternoon and somewhere over by the golf course the last “ting” of the golf clubs for the day could be heard. Just the kind of evening that makes me think: this is what we are building Båsenberga around. Not a conference room with a view, but a place that can actually handle a whole day of meetings and still give something back when the day is over.
But to be honest, we didn't just sit there and enjoy the silence. We ended up, as we usually do this time of year, thinking about autumn and everything we do here at Båsenberga.
The days before Midsummer I start thinking about autumn.
It's something that happens every year around now. In the midst of the brightest time, we still start to look towards autumn, not out of worry, but more out of anticipation. Jenny said something like that autumn always feels like our best season, and the more I think about it, the more I agree. It's the same feeling as when as a child you started longing for the first days of the autumn term back in July, even though you didn't really want to admit it. I think of the fog over the lake, of how the light changes color, and of all the groups that come here then to gather before winter.
I end up thinking that autumn is actually a harvest season in more ways than one. It's not just the apples waiting to be picked from the trees or the beets waiting to come out of the ground. It's also everything you've gathered during the summer without really noticing it. That rest, the quiet evenings, the thoughts that have had room to mature in the background. It's the harvest a group carries with them when they sit down together to shape next year's goals. You can't reap what you haven't sown, and summer is the sowing season most people forget.
What awaits when the leaves turn
Autumn at Kolsnaren is a feeling all its own. The mist settles over the lake in the morning, the apple trees are heavy with fruit, and the evenings get just cold enough for the sauna to feel like the reward it is meant to be. It is the time of year when our lake sauna goes from a nice addition to the agenda no one wants to miss.
It is also our own harvest time in the kitchen. What we call the pantry we live in is really filled during the fall. The apples, the root vegetables, everything that has grown during the summer and is now finally ripe. It feels right that it is the same autumn that welcomes groups full of rested, happy people who themselves carry the accumulated energy of a summer. Two harvests that meet at the same table.
It's also a good season to actually do something together, not just sit in a meeting room. Our farm barn, a hundred years old and full of character, will be the arena for our classic heptathlon . Slingshot shooting, nail driving and other things that make a group laugh together in a way that a regular team building session rarely succeeds in. And for those groups who want to combine a meeting with a round of golf, we have the course right outside the door.
All of this is still framed by the same thought as the rest of Båsenberga: the food , nature, and relaxation are not an addition to the meeting. They are part of it, our way of making sure that a group actually lands in what they are here to do.
A simple thought, nothing more
I'm not writing this to convince you of anything. Mostly because I myself feel a little warm in my heart at the thought of the first cold evening of autumn, a group of people laughing over a failed problem-solving in the farm store and the smell of a harvest that has become food at the same time as they bring in their own, invisible harvest of a summer's rest.
If it awakens something in you too, if you go and think about a kickoff or a conference in the fall, please get in touch. Not because I'm chasing a booking, but because I actually enjoy those conversations. We're harvesting together, so to speak.
Magnus Danielsson,
CEO, Båsenberga Hotel
