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. I’ve been in Höga Kusten in the last weeks, magnificent strecht of this magnificent country; it will take some days before I could show some shots from that area. Meanwhile, the real spring came to Särna, and I celebrate it with some more pictures from April, showing the end of the winter and the last spasms of cold.
The gift December brings me is the gold from the scarce water which still freely flows in the rivers, colored by the winter sun reflected by snow-covered trees; or the amber tone of tannins dissolved in it, made evident by a white, spotless ice which is forming as I see it, in the very moment a new wave touches an icy rock.
It is the silver forest encrusted with thick rime, when it’s already freezing but little snow has come. It is the red of the pines lit by the last sunset moment, standing out against the bluish shadow as corals or sea fans in an underwater picture. Entirely natural colors, migrated like you see them from the original scene to the memory card, and from there to the screen ... which makes the gifts even more precious.
As every year in early April, the cranes arrived. Not alone, I have to say: whooper swans, goldeneyes, goosanders and Canada geese came with them to fill every early crack which makes a pond in that slab of ice which still is, and still be for a few more days, the lake. And in the gardens chaffinches, bramblings, redpolls and siskins in blasts, in battalions.
The cranes are special, though. Special because of the animals they are, and special because they are here, just out of my home; I can hear them singing from my garden, as they explode their blaring calls from a distant shore, and you’d never believe that such a powerful sound could come out from such slender and graceful necks. They land in small groups or pairs, and slowly graze on the exposed banks. Some will leave soon, bound for new waters northward; others will remain in the area, choosing a swamp around here to nest . You can see them along all the shores: here nearby a couple who start a nuptial dance for a little while; behind it another group in distance, in the sky a family is gliding towards a bank out of sight, and each time they cross a look, a trumpets concert starts, only to vanish with an echo. The following pictures are unpretentious: they are just photo memories of special travelling companions. 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. _ 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). |
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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