On the road to Peurakaltio

It was about 10 degrees below zero and the snow was slowly falling. I didn't take the well-trodden route to get up to Äkäskero, the monkey walking along its side was more attractive.

The forest at the edge of the river was a dingy spruce forest, where there was nothing more to pursue, but I headed towards it, hoping that if anything. The camera was attached to the backpack's chest strap, where it could be quickly grabbed.

A few open ditches had to be crossed. You had to look carefully at the crossing points, because under the thin snow cover they were deceptively soft and I didn't want slush snow frozen to the bottom of the skis.

In the middle of the swamp, where there was no sign of a ditch, there was a small melted spot like an ink stain on white paper. I carefully skied to its edge and probed the depth with the pole. The rod sank without reaching the bottom. Well, it looks like you have to be careful here too, even though the willow peeking out from under the snow told you that you are on solid ground.

It was like moving in a black and white gloomy landscape picture.

I remembered AE Järvinen's short stories, in which he often described skiing in similar landscapes, shooting frost forests. Sometimes in severe frost, sometimes in a blizzard.
He hauled the ahkii all day and in the dark built a position, poured Honga and made crack fires. He made evening soup from the birds he had shot and gratefully settled down to sleep in his shelter on the pines.
His controversial position was assessing the forest for large-scale clear-cutting. In his later short stories, he sadly wondered when he no longer felt the landscapes of his youth in the treeless Pomokaira.

Jänkä was not wide, but after a small narrow it continued as another opening. A reindeer had passed through the narrow spot, and next to them there were round, thick tracks, which I guessed to be a wolverine or a lynx. A layer of snow had fallen on top of the tracks and they disappeared into the thicket.
My pace was leisurely and sometimes I listened to the deafening silence and looked at the monotonous but strangely charming landscape. The forest bordering Jänka stood out through the pale snow cover as soft and dark. The greenness of the needles was not distinguished.

In the drone photo, I would have looked quite lonely on a snowy plain. I remembered a phrase from a travelogue: "Is there anything lonelier than a Mongolian man in the Mongolian desert".