Down by the seaside

It was the last week of the summer vacation, and we went to the coast down south. Actually, it's not very far south, just an hour driving south of Winterland.

Blackberries are growing wild by the roads, very nice to eat right off the bush. Blackberries don't grow in Winterland.

(I might use this as a definition; Winterland is the land north of the northermost blackberry bush.)

We had some nice and lazy days by the sea, swimming, jumping from cliffs (the kids, not me), fishing, or just racing around on the fjord in a small boat, just for fun.

Little boy caught a grasshopper and put it in a jar. He named it Roy and tried to teach it tricks. It turned out that Roy wasn't very willing to learn.

I've read some good books, of course. First, I read my every-summer-on-the-beach book; The Gambler by Dostoyevsky. It's about the 10th time I read it. Second, I read Boomerang by Tatiana de Rosnay. Good book, recommended.

Then I found this old book in a shelf; The Barble Bush by Charles Mergendahl. I had never heard of it before, but the text on the back cover made me curious; "2.5 million copies sold" (not necessarily a good sign), "mercy killing, adultry, seduction, insanity ... sordid ingredients". And the book wasn't bad, I think.

From time to time, I got tired of reading; I wanted to write. So, I got a notebook, and started to write a new novel. The notebook has pages labeled from A to Z (plus a couple of strange letters we're using here). Just for fun, I started a new chapter for every new heading-letter, and each chapter beginning with the same letter. I'm writing longhand, so I have to rewrite (and edit) everything later.

My new (so-called) novel is a story about two old men escaping from the nursery home, and their adventures as they travel northward. It's is kind of a road movie, except that it's a novel, and that they travel by train and ship rather than car. On their way, they summarize their different, but equally miserable lives and hope that their last journey will bring something exciting. I have no plot and no plan; we'll see where it ends.

Led Zeppelin? Yes, that's right. I borrowed the title of this post from a Led Zeppelin song on the Physical Graffiti album.

(I took the picture above on a nice and sunny day at the beach. The area along the coast is of great geological interest. The rocks were created by volcanic erruptions some 150 million years ago, and later carved and shaped by glaciers. It's nature's own art.)

Gone fishing

It was still sunny and warm when little boy and I left the city behind, and drove up to the mountains. We were just the two of us in the car. We had a nice trip, playing AC/DC, Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin, load, all the way. It was dark when we arrived in our family cabin.

The next morning it was raining. We only went for a short hike. I slid on a slippery rock and fell into the river.
"Are you OK", little boy shouted. He looked a little bit anxious.
"No problem", I just got wet.
"Do you wanna go back to the cabin?"
"No, We can stay if you want to, I’m not cold."

I took off all my clothes, and stood naked on a rock. The rain had stopped for a while, and the wind gusts coming down the mountain sides felt warm. I emptied my boots, twisted my clothes, to squeeze out as much water as possible. Then I put the clothes back on. The digi-cam in my pocket was wet, and didn't work anymore.

Later, when we returned to the cabin, our fish bag was still empty.

On the 2nd day, the rain had stopped. My clothes were dry, and my camera came back to life (beating Jesus by one day). We went up to a pond where we always catch fish, without exception. It's a one-hour hike along a white-water river, to a deep canyon, above the timber line. Little boy's cousin and uncle joined us too.

We stopped at the top of the gorge to eat some sandwiches. Then we climbed down to the river.
"Be careful," I told little boy, "check the rocks before you step on them, to make sure they don't slide."
"Yes, I know, I've been here before."
"And remember that climbing down is more difficult than climbing up," I added.

Down in the canyon, we put bite on the hook and threw it into the river. Little boy threw the line towards the mountain wall on the other side of the canyon, and let the bite drift towards the white-water fall. He hooked a trout on the first throw. We always do in that pond.
"I wanna kill it myself," said little boy.
"OK, just knock the fish head against a rock a few times," I said.
We put the trout on a big flat rock, and a smaller rock on top of it, to make sure it didn't escape between the boulders. The trouts move for half an hour after they're dead.

In two hours, we caught ten fish all together. The trouts were quite solidaric and fair; they went evenly on little boy's and little cousin's hooks. (The Tea Party guys have something to learn from the fish.)
"We got twice as many last year," said little boy.
"That's not important. Ten is good enough, and then we leave some fish for the guys who come here next time."

On the 3rd day, the weather changed. Northern winds brought cold air down from the Arctic, and temperatures dropped to less than 10 degrees (50 Fahrenheit). We had to find our gloves in the suitcase before we went out.

We caught 3 trouts and lost even more.

On the 4th day we didn't fish at all. We sat in the forest with our knives, carving stuff out of birch branches, and we picked 3kg (6 pounds) of cloud berries on the moors.

Then we returned to the civilization; to newspapers, TV, cell-phone coverage and Internet. I must admit I didn't miss is >:)

(The picture above is from the 2nd day. It's our best pond in the lower part of the picture. We always catch fish on the first throw, and usually on the 2nd and 3rd throws as well. There are two similar ponds above, but they are not accessible. Actually, when I was a kid, my father climbed down to the uppermost pond, making a rope with T-shirts tied together. My brother and I sat on the top watching (without T-shirts). My mother got furious when she heard of it: "Such a lack of responsibility, setting his life at stake to catch fish, with his little kids watching". I have never tried to copy his stunt, and I never will.)

Biscuit poker

It’s school’s summer vacation, but parents are still at work, at least we are.

Therefore, little boy spent a week in our family cabin in the mountains, with his grand parents. This weekend we drove up to the mountains, to pick him up and bring him back to town.

When I met him, I asked if he had a good time.

"Yes, we've been on long hikes in the mountains. I found a reindeer antler, and carried it myself, for two hours, back to the cabin."
"Good. We can keep it here, right? We don't need to bring it home?"

And then it was all the regular stuff about fishing, bow shooting, rowing on the lake, rock climbing, tree climbing, making a slingshot from a birch branch, and so on.

Finally, he said:

"Grandpa taught me how to play poker."
"Great. You’re 10 yo, so it’s about time you learn it."
"We only played with biscuits."
"Did you win?"
"I got all the biscuits in the end."

Grandpa’s summer camp is always a cool place to be >:)

(In the picture is little boy climbing an old pine tree outside the cabin. The pines are 2-300 years old and grow very slowly in the mountain climate. I climbed the same trees many years ago, and still do, sometimes.)

Third River

We hiked along the main river for about an hour, to the place where a stream comes in from the side. Some places the trail was wet and muddy. We jumped from rock to rock to keep our shoes dry. On the narrowest point, we crossed the stream on a bridge made from two logs close together, only a foot wide.

We went down to a pool under a high waterfall and started fishing. A big trout (as seen with kids’ eyes) was hooked on the first throw. After a couple of hours, we had thrown 3 small trout back to the river, and put 4 in the bag.

I guess you’ve got the point now? Where to get the easy catch. Yes, of course, it’s in a big pool, under a high waterfall, where the fish are waiting for food to pass by, and the waterfall is too high for the trout to jump up.

Second River

In the morning, we went up to an old cottage to dig for earthworm. That’s the bait that gives the easiest catch. With 40 earthworms in the box, and some soil on top to keep them alive, we were ready for fishing.

We hiked for ten minutes from the bridge were the gravel road crosses the river. By a pool under a big waterfall, we stopped and made the rods ready. Little boy and his even smaller cousin was fishing. I was watching from the background, clearing nots on the fishing line, and threading the worms on the hook.

The result, after a couple of hours of fishing, was 2 small trout thrown back into the river, 2 lost between the boulders and 6 in the bag. Then we gutted the fish. We cut them open from the hole under the tail where the poop comes out to the jaws, and pulled out the entrails. We studied the liver and heart and bowel, and determined the sex (looking for the caviar, as the kids say it). We got 2 girl-fish and 4 boy-fish.

It was a warm and sunny day. We stopped by the cabin and picked up our swimming shorts and towels and soap, and went down in the lake to swim and wash ourselves.

First River

We started from the trail head around noon, a long line of people walking on the trail; the boys, their cousins, uncles, and grandfather with his stick made from juniper. We hiked for an hour and a half, first through birch forest, then above timberline. The grandfather ran off on sidetracks to check out the cloudberries on some marshes that he is keeping an eye on.

On a place were we cross a small stream, we stopped by the canyon to eat lunch. We had a lunch package with 30 sandwiches and a bottle of concentrated black current syrup. Then we just add cold water from the stream before we drink it. All the time a golden-eagle couple was circling above us, screaming and complaining since we were close to their nest.

We climbed down in the canyon, to let the kids fish trout in the river, in a pool under a white waterfall. We were apparently the first people climb down this summer, as seen from the grass growing in the trench where we decent. After an hour, the kids had pulled 19 trout out of the water. The trout are still flipping for a long time after they’re dead. That’s why we load some rocks on, to avoid loosing the fish between the boulders.

To the mountains

I have been in the mountains for a few days, with the boys.

Early in August is the best time to go. Late in the summer the water in the lakes is often warm enough to go swimming. We can eat blueberries and cloudberries and black crowberries by the trail when we go hiking. The trout fishing in the rivers is very good.

Our mountain cabin is very simple; no electricity, no cell-phone, no tap water (we carry drinking water in buckets from the river), and no internet of course. I had no chance to post the stuff I wrote, on a sheet of paper, under a candle light at night. I'll type it in, and post it together with some nice pics from our fishing trips in the next few days >:)