In just a little while there will be a scent of the sea mingled with the scent of meadowsweet, ducks gossiping with each other while chewing seaweed, and night time picnics under the yellow overweight August moon. Because the ice is gone and I saw eleven swans today.
(Helsinki, Finland; March 2016)
Tag Archives: outdoors
No more winter sleep for the fish
It is the first time this year when one can hear the sea. Not whispering, or roaring, but rustle and swish. Ice against ice, slush lapping the shore. Rustle and swish. Like thousands of thin golden chains and bracelets swirling around in a bowl, there is no more sleeping even underwater.
Spring is soon here, even for the fish.
(Helsinki, Finland; February 2016)
A modern monkey
After browsing the free-time activities during a work retreat, I signed up for a canopy tour. I thought it would be like the canopy tours I did in the past: walking on planks and suspension bridges in trees. How wrong I was. Read the small print they say – but who ever does?
Instead we were whisked up on top of a mountain in a ski lift, trussed and clamped into a harness, and sent down the mountain on ziplines, toes skimming the treetops. Hanging from a wire, wind in my eyes, speeding towards a huge tree, I had to learn to brake with my glove on the wire before hitting it full speed. That’s what the helmets were for – or against.
As I stood under the apex of a lark tree, enjoying the sunlight and hum of the wind in the branches, squirrels scattered in all directions with angry complaints: humans don’t belong in the trees anymore. “Have not done so for quite a while so Go Away!”
Yet I could not help but think of John Muir’s tale about when he rode out a storm in the top of a douglas fir in Yosemite. And I thought of redwood arborists who spend days harnessed and hanging from trees, studying the animals and trees that grow from compost deposited on a redwood branch – and even sleeping suspended in the trees.
And I realized I just may have missed a second calling as an arborist, spending my days up in the trees, researching the microecosystem of a single tree branch. I may have missed a chance for happiness by reverting into a modern monkey.
(Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA; October 2015)
New Hampshire ruska
Is it a 19th century landscape with oil on canvas? No, it is real: the backyard of our lovely hotel in Bretton Woods. Ruska is Finnish for fall foliage and this is ruska at its best. But what Scandinavia misses is the maple that, when it sucks back the life from its leaves, turns them a dark-blue-blood-red against its light gray trunk. The New England ruska is tinted by royal blood.
(Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA; October 2015)
Eye of the sea
After journeying uphill for hours there it was: Morskie Oko, or the Eye of the Sea. According to legend, the lake has so much fish because somewhere in the fathoms lies a hole that takes the brave diver through a tunnel all the way into the Mediterranean sea. I saw schools of baby trout swimming around. Some brave baby trout. The Adriatic is a long way away from the tail of the Carpathian mountains.
Morskie oko is emerald green, and even in the shallow shore waters it clashed with cornflower blue toes. Important detail to the esthetic photographer – although who cares when the sun throws sparkles in the water?
(Morskie Oko lake, Tatra Mountains National Park, Poland; July 2015)
The sisters who went for a walk and ended up on a mountaintop
“Instead of a proper hike, would you please just recommend a nice, leisurely walk?” we asked the tourist guide in Zakopane. “Sure” he said, “this one is nice, flat terrain. Takes you straight along the stream in the Dolina Bialego valley”.”Sonds wonderful and easy”, we said.
How wrong we were. The terrain was not flat: it was all uphill. It was not easy: often it was climbing a dirt wall, or loose stones. And yes it was straight: up the mountain. In 34 degrees Centigrade and scorching sun the leafy stream valley brought little refreshment. At each crossing we conferred: “turn around?” “Nah, let’s go a little further, it is pretty here, and we have as much water as we need.”
Instead of that nice, leisurely walk we ended up climbing the Sarnia Skala peak and the rocky outcrop you see on the top photo. That photo was already from halfway up.
They say the process is more important than the outcome, but reaching the goal is a sweet moment – especially if the goal is a surprise.
(Tatra Mountains National Park, Poland; July 2015)
Borders are a human invention
It was a warm night after a hot day in Zakopane. Just before sunset. And there was a cable-car, and a second cable car, and finally a mountaintop, with gorgeous ski bowls awaiting the winter’s snow, now all green with grass sprinkled with little furry bluebells.
Up on that mountaintop was a line drawn in the minds of human beings. They had decided that one kind of people lived to the left, and another kind to the right. But there was no real line in the mountains. Only futile attempts at hammering short stocky poles into the ground between the rocks.
Somehow it made a big difference to people on which cliff they sat. Because one cliff meant you sat in “Poland” and the other one placed you in “Slovakia”. To the goats and the hoverflies a bluebell was a bluebell, regardless of which side of the slope it grew.
As I sat with my feet in Slovakia and my behind in Poland, I thought of the seemingly innate human desire to separate. Borders are drawn for those beings who feel the necessity to own, to limit, and to classify. Borderless is chaos to most people and unity to most animals. Borders require straight lines, defined areas, and natural separations such as this mountain. Perhaps mother Nature, who saw the big picture, thought it a good joke to create a planet that was round?
(Kasprowy Wierch, Poland / Slovakia; July 2015)
Timeout – do widzenia
(Image courtesy of http://www.adventurous-travels.com)
(Tatra mountains, Poland; July 2015)
One cold midsummer
Last midsummer was cold. This midsummer was cold and rainy. But there were still flowers. And cuckoos. And a light night. But on an average summer, there would not be lilacs anymore, and the fields would be green with wheat sprouts. Global warming, where did you go?
(Loviisa, Finland; June 2015)
Any random Saturday
Any random Saturday one could be tidying the house and doing the laundry – or one could relax by the sea. Summer is short. Which one do you choose?
(Helsinki, Finland; June 2015)
This blue marble 