Weathering the North

When living in our modern welfare state where the celebrated Nordic model is still (more or less) in place – meaning, for example, that education and healthcare are free and the society runs practically like clockwork – there is something here you just cannot rely on. In a northern country you will never know for sure how the weather will be any given time of the year.

In April, the temperature already rose to +20°C but only for a while. Towards the end of the month, nature seemed to come to a standstill. This weekend, we had thunderstorm with hail showers beating the tiny buds that were finally about to come to life.

For Friday morning, we had booked two strong young men to come to fell a couple of dozen dried up or otherwise wretched trees from the row of spruces bordering our garden on two sides. They also cut the trunks into pieces and were done in three hours.

We cleared out the mess ourselves. It took us three days. As soon as we had all the pieces nicely piled up and had carried the branches and brushwood away from the garden the pouring started.

For once, I was too tired to stay up very late. I do love the summer season when you will be engaged in physical activity just like that, into the bargain so to speak. There is plenty more to come. Not just yet, my body tells me. 

Most of the snow is gone by now but the below photo shows how it was last night at about 5 am. We can only hope this was the last of that sort we will have to weather here in the North this spring.

Took a hike

This year, spring arrived early and so far it has been almost rainless. Yet, nature is reviving slowly as the temperature keeps falling below freezing point almost every night.

The other day, we drove to Espoo to walk one of the trails at the Nuuksio National Park. It’s about time I put my Vendramini hiking boots in frequent service. I’ve understood the Italian company only manufactures motorcycle boots these days. I bought mine in Chamonix more than two decades ago and they are still as good as new because of my unsporty character. The conditions were ideal: sunny with a slight breeze and a temperature close to +20°C. Birds were singing nonstop. Frogs were croaking in the brooks.

One frog was even sunbathing in the middle of the road while another one had been run over by a car by the parking lot. (Sorry but I couldn’t help including the photo of the colourful entrails on the road. The remains of the poor frog looked like a modern piece of art to me.)  In the deepest shadows of the forest, however, there was still some ice on the swampy spots.

On our way home, we stopped for a picnic lunch by a roadside lake. Although we still have to wait for the greenery early spring is such a wonderful season. It makes your heart sing.

More about the Nuuksio National Park in an earlier post of mine here.

Perfect sauna visit

An evening with friends by ‘their’ lake. A coffee break. A moment in the hammock staring up to the tree tops.

A short round with the rowing boat to check the quiet neighbourhood while waiting for the wood-burning sauna to heat up.

Sweating in the sauna, cooling in the lake. Sweating and cooling two, three, four times. Washing up and having a final dip in the lake. Getting dressed and taking a sip of beer for the fluid balance.

Enjoying the warmth of the last rays of sunshine and feeling contented. A perfect kind of summer evening, a rarity this late in our August.

If any of the foreign readers are wondering about the Finnish sauna bathing ways – we are the highest authority with our two million saunas for a people of 5.4 million – I can assure you I am as native as you can get and I have never been to a mixed sauna where everyone wouldn’t have had a swimsuit or trunks. Nakedness is by no means compulsory although it is common among same-sex bathers.

In the great outdoors

This spring, most of Europe has been suffering from exceptionally cold and wet weather but in Finland, for a change, May was unusually warm. In fact, the highest temperature of the months – 30.5°C (87°F) – was recently measured up in Lapland well above the Arctic Circle more than a thousand kilometres north from here. We didn’t quite reach 30°C although it was closer than close (29.9°C).

We’ve been pampered with such lovely summer days for a couple of weeks now that I felt moving our lives into the garden and yard was not enough. I wanted to experience more than our lumpy lawn and the everlasting battle against dandelions. As we had friends visiting over the weekend we took them to enjoy nature in the Nuuksio National Park located only 35 kilometres from Helsinki.

Nuuksio is an area of some 53 square km on the northwestern outskirts of the metropolitan area. It has remained an untouched wilderness thanks to its rocky landscape and swamps that made the terrain unsuitable for farming. Being so close to the capital, it is a popular destination for hiking, trekking and other recreational outdoor activities. Travellers and expats have also found this oasis. We went there on Saturday which was the national day for graduations and closing of schools for the two-month summer holidays. On a quiet afternoon like that the proportion of foreign visitors was rather striking.

Nuuksio offers a number of marked trails plus several cooking shelters and camping sites for anyone to utilize as long as you follow the rules not to litter or otherwise harm nature or disturb the animals. There are more than 80 lakes and ponds in the park inviting you to dive in if you feel like it. You can even hire a cabin in the wilderness or go scout-like trekking in the unmarked backwoods with a map and a compass if you prefer to observe the wildlife on your own.

We walked one of the shorter trails climbing a few rocky hills and having a picnic lunch by one of the lakes. Being such amateur hikers, we didn’t see any of the dozens of endangered or near-endangered species living there, not even the Siberian flying squirrel (Pteromys volans), the emblem of Nuuksio. It is the only flying squirrel in Europe and considered a vulnerable species because of its rarity here. Furthermore, in Europe they are only found in Finland and Estonia, meaning that several construction plans have been wrecked around the country over the years due to – sometimes, it seems, almost miraculous – sightings of flying squirrels.

I am ashamed we never took the kids to Nuuksio during the years they were young and we lived in Espoo where most of the national park is located. There is a lame excuse for the summers: we wanted to ensure we wouldn’t be disturbed from the office and would have the best of weathers so we used to spend the parents’ four-week vacation further south, most often in the south of France. I guess you could argue such holidays may have given my children as valuable memories as a local national park might have. Nevertheless, I hope when they will have children of their own one day they will be wise enough to take their kids to places like Nuuksio, too.

We will definitely start paying more frequent visits carrying a picnic lunch in our backpacks and will also try the other entrances to the area now that we finally got started. One day we may even spot the famous flying squirrel there. To see a brown bear or a lynx we’d only need to stay at our neighbour’s living a few hundred metres away by the forest at the far end of the cornfield behind our place. In a sparsely populated country such as ours you will find the great outdoors at your doorstep most everywhere.