Welcome to NOTES FROM THE PACIFIC

Thanks for coming along.

Hello and welcome,

I’m glad you’re here.

Notes from the Pacific was born during a longer stay with my family in French Polynesia, among the islands of Tahiti.

Vilil hitching a ride on the bed of Toriki’s Toyota through Huahine.

While on a sojourn there, for reasons I didn’t entirely understand at the time, I began writing letters — not to anyone in particular, but simply to capture the small moments of life as they unfolded: the humid air, the salty winds, the laughter of children drifting over the lagoon. I guess we don’t really write letters anymore, so it felt pointless, yet somehow it made sense.

At some point, the letters began to weave themselves into something larger.

They became reflections on travel, identity, family, and the fragile, resilient beauty of existence.

We stayed with locals, renting side buildings and small houses for about four months — right in the midst of the global pandemic in 2022.

For a family with four children, aged between three and eleven, despite living in a tropical fantasy it was also a trying time. Organising school and running our business from remote islands brought more than a few challenges. Needless to say we did bring that onto ourselves. We weathered a stomach flu on a distant atoll, learned to spearfish via YouTube to get food, and became sunburned more times than I can count.

Thierry, my shamanic guide to the underwater looking for fish on Taha’a.

Yet it was precisely in those remote places — places that sometimes resembled paradise, and other times reminded me of deserts or the desolate highlands of Iceland — that I felt I could access parts of human experience that tend to get lost in the clutter we call normal life.

Corals forgotten by the world on Tikehau.

This space is a continuation of that journey.

Here, I’ll share photographs, letters, and glimpses of life from distant shores and the quiet spaces in between — sometimes joyful, sometimes uncertain, always curious.

My book Notes from the Pacific will be published by Cozy Publishing in early fall 2025.

In the meantime, I hope these letters offer you small windows into wonder, wherever you are.

Welcome aboard.

Somewhere on or between the shores,

– Timo –

P.S. — “The Octopus,” first of the lagoon letters, is coming soon. Stay tuned.

Usually around seven in the morning, the Octopus starts thinking about breakfast. That’s when it slips out of its nest and begins its search for food.

It’s how we first met.

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