I went up to "Erik-Knutsåsen" observation tower nearby Gördalen, along the northern borders of the national park Fulufjället. It's a lovely viewpoint upon a wild area covered by a high ground, sparse forest with spruces and birches, wavy hills alternated with marshes and small ponds. Just got to the top, I spot on the platform some tiny masses of material, which at a closer look reveal to be droppings (or hairballs) from an owl. I raise my eyes: twenty meters away I cross the magnetic ones from a hawk-owl, which clearly chose as well to take advantage of the view from the tower. A wonderful encounter, unexpected and not so usual. You can’t be ready for anything anytime, and I had climbed the tower with a landscape, “short” photo set up: thus this picture is a generous crop, which, however, reflects the spirit of the original composition, where the animal (by choice, by need or both) is placed in the environment. The kind of wildlife image I prefer. The coming winter is supposed to be the best since many years for the phenomenons associated with solar activity. Inquiries about places and times keep flowing in my email. I want to make something clear: Särna isn't the best place at all for northern lights (sadly): too far south respect where the party really is. You have to consider at least the area starting from the Polar Circle, going northward, in order to get reasonable chances to see an Aurora Borealis in the short time of a travel. That's why this picture comes from the Swedish Lapland (Porjus): take it as a greeting card with all my best wishes to whoever is going to leave in the next months, in the quest of the world's most beautiful show. Ice Spiders _ The lack of snow persists. The landscape keeps an atypical appearance for the beginning of December: looking at the forest of conifers, it would be virtually impossible to tell whether we are in May or late autumn, without take a look at the calendar. There is still room, then, for the games of the cold: a few degrees below zero are enough to transfom the shores of Lake Särna - and any other expanse of water in the region - into canvas over which the ice seems to enjoy drawing the most amazing shapes. Here it is a couple of images that ideally complements the last year's collection "The Icy Ten", taken in the same circumstances, which you can see here in the 2010 Chronicles. Here next, the water surface was solidified with a crystallization phenomenon that created regular geometric shapes: it happens when the temperatures drop suddenly within a single night, from just above zero to minus ten degrees. Waves _ In Särna, the lake sports small but delightful beaches made by fine sand, methodically arranged by the wind, and by the even slightest backwash, in the shape of those classical, minute waves that you expect from the sand at any latitude. The water entering and flooding them is the first to freeze, and creates a double scheme of mirrored sinuousities beneath a thin layer of ice so transparent to be invisible, if wasn't for some still free sand blown by the wind, which rests on it, taking the shape of long strips of gold. This gold moves rolling on the ice with waving motion - in all respects similar to a snake - and run all over the lake: one of those rare moments when I regret not having a videocamera in my hands. The snow is expected in very short term, and once it will be here there will be no way to play with the ice again, until October of next year. _ Let's take a step back to the Söderåsen National Park, end of October. I am in the highest part of the beechwood when I hear a constant swish. Something quite similar to a river noise, but there are no streams here around. I approach the source of noise, which rises in intensity. All the sudden a cloud and a rumble explode, coming from the undergrowth: a huge flock of Brambling takes flight. And takes flight, and again and again... it lasts for a whole minute at least, filling the air with multiple twittering waves which land not far from me covering both ground and canopy, where they go back doing what they were doing before I disturbed them: frenetically feed on beechnuts. Bramblings use to gather for the winter, sometime building up enormous numbers: I remember well the wintering flock in Slovenia which, few years ago, made quite a sensation between bird enthusiasts, estimated in 4 million birds. Here the figures are lower, but I am looking for sure to some tens of thousands birds, hard to say exactly how many. _I keep getting close, and all around me more flocks rise, deflagrating in the mist with waterfall rumble, as geysers' eruptions. I carefully approach further: on the ground the birds are so many that the leaves are no more visible. Another group takes flight, heading towards me, flies over me, it's above me and around as a whirl, a maelström made by small bodies and frenziedly flapped wings. The hands run to the camera, but the result is totally inadequate, as easily predictable. I find myself covered with droppings but rewarded by one of the most touching nature experience I've ever had. Someone doesn't make it: last pictures shows a male trapped in a dead branch, perhaps during a sudden attempt to take flight.
_ It is now ten days since I've been back in Särna, and I found myself in the middle of a record breaking autumn: the Swedish Meteorological Institute stated that these are the highest average temperatures since weather statistics started to be recorded at the beginning of the last century. No ice, in the South mushrooms are still picked, and I've seen lupins blooming while I was driving northward, coming back home. All through the country there isn't yet a single snowflake, which is weird in the middle of November. However, in the last couple of days in Särna – also called “the cold hole”, being one of the chillest place in Sweden, at least during the winter – we finally had temperatures way below zero. A new season is really starting, the one with the long shadows, the winter wonderland sceneries and the white blanket. To be honest, I hope that the last one will be delayed for some more time (shovelling is no fun, believe me). Back in Sweden from my Italian travel, I made a stop for just a single day (sadly) in Söderåsen National Park, which left me in May such a beautiful memory during my travel in Skåne. The park preserves a strip of the largest Nordic beech forest, an unusual one, at least for an Italian: while this tree is a typical mountain species in the south of the continent, it thrives in Sweden in plain's environments. And of course it unfolds itself in autumn in one of its more magical dresses. Here they are some shots taken in the short time I was there: a selection of traditional wood pictures, followed by two more dreamy visions.
To be honest, the birches aren't the main subject of the following pictures, but they rather serve as a context, but I love this tree and I like to pay homage to it whenever I can. I've been in Swedish Lapland in mid-September, in an attempt to revive the past glories of my northern lights and autumn colors. I'm writing "attempt" here, because the inclement weather precluded me any observation of aurora (which were quite active), and a hot summer - which lasted well into September - has guaranteed the worst autumn colors since I know Scandinavia: which means a lot of time. Only in the Abisko area the local birch forest – which covers an open plateau earlier affected by the first night cold (the switch that triggers the phenomenon) – has given me some glimpses worthy of the chilometers I had to drive to get there (1,200 km from Särna: so much for those who think I live “in the very North” :-). In some areas the undergrowth was a whole carpet of dwarf cornel (Cornus suecica), which shades were ranging from yellow to dark purple; just above, a thick layer of gold: the foliage of the birches. Two colors, two worlds. Between them, essential and shiny trunks thrown to fill the gap, as a bridge; to support the yellow on purple, like planking. A bit southward, we are in Kvikkjokk, at the gates of Sarek National Park. Still a birch, this time in black and white: a photo I wasn't really happy about, in color, but which in gray tones has surprisingly gained a character on its own, thanks to the soft light associated with the motion. "Wouldn't be out of place in a Tolkien's book" said a friend of mine; told by a leading member of the Italian Tolkien Society, that can only please me. Not more than two and a half months have gone since I first saw these little ferns, Gymnocarpium dryopteris, unfolding their leaves like petals of flowers, with such a tender green to be almost impossible to catch on picture; like wings of just hatched butterflies which are filling with air, lying in thousands under the protective watch of pines and birches, drawing a living carpet that seemed to swarm though it was completely still, or, at least, barely stirred by a puff of forest breeze. Now, twelve weeks later – a time which in other species might mean a gestation, not a whole life - here they are giving up, shrinking, turning brown, standing in colors from the blanket of moss that grew after them, and under them; it being still green indeed, as if it is sucking their hue from below, and the life force with it. Autumn comes soon in the North, and by what a mountain of trivialities I could muddy this space on such a subject, that I'll leave to you to imagine; and I refrain from doing so. |
All site contents are: © Vitantonio Dell'Orto, all rights reserved worldwide. The Chronicles of Särna, and other stories from the North.
I live in Sweden, in Särna (Dalarna). The Chronicles are a photo diary about the nature (but not just) here around and from all the Scandinavian areas where my photo job takes me.
My book: "My Sweden - Tales from an Italian photographer in the North" is available in the bookstores and by the publisher.
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