One to end it. The month just gone has been one of the warmest in the last 50 years, here in Dalarna. Wind, temperatures regularly above zero (even today, December the 31st, a day in which we use to struggle against -25/30°) and frequent rain. I could well have stayed in Northern Italy to get such a weather... Consequently, that has been a really poor photo month, with a bare landscape, little and dirty snow, grass emerging in the meadows, and wide sections of underwood entirely green. For this end of the month (and year), then here it is a shot from its beginning. Have a Happy 2014, everyone. Few days ago in the flooded forest of Göljån: lynx's footprints, not older than a handful of hours. This gives me the opportunity to narrate an “almost” close encounter with the big cat of the subject, few years ago, in the very same location. I was there to photograph a dipper which was hanging out along one the several creeks crossing the wood devastated by the great flooding from 1997; by the way, exactly the one, frozen, in the picture here. To get there, you have to walk on a narrow wooden boardwalk. I was a twenty meters from it, bent on the tripod and focused on the dipper coming and going on a fallen tree not so far. After just ten minutes I picked up my gear and was heading to my car: on the boardwalk, well clear and obvious on the dry wood, a very fresh track of linx's wet footprints was there, and it wasn't there before. To make it short, a lynx passed by my back, just 20 meters from me and in open sight, while I was staring exactly at the opposite direction. Ever since, inevitably, everytime I recall that moment, with a bitter smile the old commercial I embed here below comes to my mind. |
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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