Midsummers night

it is lovely to feel that one can contribute to the understanding of others in ones own small way, and to believe that it gives happiness and the joy of life to those who see beyond the words into the heart. How exciting to think that I could open your mind to other ways of looking at things, and share with me my enthusiasm for the positive sides of life. The sun is shining and the sky is blue now, outside the window and having been a 3 1/2 hr walk yesterday today we shall rest a little. Tough up hill:- As we entered the woods the pungent smell of Autumn leaves filled the air and made me excited to be present in such perfumes, far better than those of any famous fashion house! Further up they were added to by the sudden wonderful waft of the sweet smelling mires, so special a smell, so evocative of the high mountains and the stunted trees. Ferns on a boulder looked like raindrops splashed up, as did the lilies of the valley. The flutterings of what looked like tiny birds were the slow twisting flight of yellow birch leaves leaving their perches for good. Lower down there were the heart shaped wood sorrel leaves looking like last years love poems, golden and pale green. The steep climb up a never ending stoney path of just over a metre wide, went on and on and on. At last when at the top of it, the boggy water-logged earth was crossed by planks laid down, wobbly ones, and beside us were great wonderful ant heaps overgrown with bilberries and heather, looking like special modern hair do's! Then again up and up but not so steeply and the path darkened with the forest closing in around us, the 'altar stone' stood in its usual place guarding the drop down to the west, and here we stopped for a little rest, admiring the huge tree wedged rocks on the eastern side. Then again steeply up and up, but now the forest was lifted by the steep sides and under the many fallen moss covered boulders the sound, the only sound, was that of water 'sildring' and gurgling deep out of sight. That most lovely sound, as one caught glimpses of the black waters of the beck with the white glints from the reflection of the sky, or the foaming of the water where there was a fall. Fallen trees were gaunt skeletons, with rows of branch-teeth, or arms that had flailed about as it fell, now moss decorated too. Great black wet walls shone with brilliant mosses clinging on. Spent Summer flowers hung their 'dirty washing' out to dry for ever and the looming walls closed in on us to make gateways to the further heights. As we approached the highest point 430m. we saw a tree like an ox, huge horns to each side, dead. Another tree had died nearby but it had stolen some leaves from its neighbours. Then came the Boy Scout's timber hut, and past it to the heath-like tops with bilberries turning slightly red and orange, more bogs to cross and through an untidy wood to the trekking hut, where if one wishes one can spend the night, and beyond that the lightness of the sky told of the wide open expanse of woodland and a wonderful view out over the lakes, Öyungen being the biggest just below with its little islands of fir trees, immobile ships, anchored in its grey-white surface. What a splendid place to sit on a bench of a half tree trunk, and eat ones 'niste' while feeling as if one were sitting where all the wood animals gather to stand and stare too, out over the wild wooded landscape for. The huge holes in the two dead trees stripped of bark and whitened by the bleaching of the sun and the Winter' storms and snow. Then the ordeal of descending, as the white plate of Maridals lake shone in the middle heights, the tall pines silhouetted against the brighter light sky, the little path passed over huge laid down stones, small trees stood among the prairie like grasses and the view to the right still showed the blue hills in the far distance. Going down is as hard, if not harder than going up, the knees and legs tend to have to take a hard knocking as one strides down from a boggy grass clump to a rock face, and that might be slippery! So careful judgement must be used at each step. Once down he wooded path seems also to go on forever, as the clock nears the 3 1/2 hr mark, and we begin to tire easily at sudden difficult paces, and then when the little bridge we passed over first tells us that we are at the start yet again , the pace becomes easier as there is a wide wood track to follow on stoney surface and we have time to look down into the wood falling away on the left where there are so many streams that form a secret tree-covered delta of their own. A horse in the last field yawns twice, looking like a Picasso painting and then settles down to being just a horse, with two others, in a meadow. They sand under the fir trees in the shade even though the sun has not looked out before the late afternoon. And so back along the Maridals valley past Skar and out past the ancient priory ruins, where the lake herself shines with the gathering of little floating bodies of the ducks. Past the few farms there and back into the metropolis, albeit the outskirts. Just a taste of Norway near Oslo. Love to dear you and thank you for sharing with me, Ann