The Quiet Picture

Having complained about my inability to take action, it will come as a surprise that my cabin project has taken a major leap forward – I signed the contract today! I found a contractor who will build the cabin for me, all I need to do myself is to furnish it when they’re done. Well, that and pay up. A lot. The money is just insane… I had absolutely no idea it would cost this much. I was under the happy illusion that I could get the cabin for half the money I’m paying. Oh, those blissful days of ignorance. But you know what? I don’t mind! Get this – they will build the cabin this year. This year! If they get all the permits in time and there are no nasty surprises on the way (like solid rock when they start digging in the grounds), then I might just be able to give myself a mountain cabin as a Christmas present. The best ever!

Can you believe it?

I sure can’t, and I have the contract in black and white. I’m elated and worried at the same time. Elated that the project is going ahead, and scared that I will get a rickety rackety shack with the wind howling in the corners. Time to take a leap of faith and trust them to deliver me a cabin that will last the rest of my life. That’s how long I will be paying for it, in any case!

I just remembered that last spring I posted my plan for the summer. So time to check the list and see how I did.

• Motorbike. Well, we all (the regular blog readers, anyway) know what happened with that. Crash boom bang. Add some bad weather and it’s a recipe for leaving the Tricker in the garage. On top of everything else, the motorbike turned out to be a bad photographer’s buddy. It’s just simply not practical to haul the gear on the bike and even if I did, I’d still have a problem with all the protective clothing because it’s not suited for photography, so I’d need a change of clothes as well. I proved myself that I’m not afraid of the motorbike after my accident so I’m not giving up because of it, and thus, the Tricker is now officially for sale!
• Mountains. Yes, been there, seen it, done that. Found a lot of nice new places but I guess the biggest mountain-related thing of the summer is that I bought a piece of land there. So there’ll be more mountains in the future, for sure.
• Waterfalls. Yes, found plenty of those, some of them were positive surprises and others were disappointments. I didn’t get a chance to do my “waterfall day” which would’ve taken me to four different waterfalls I hadn’t seen yet, but I did get to see one of those four and it fell way short from my expectations. So if I do the waterfall day next year, I’ll have a more manageable three falls left to see.

Although I implied that I wouldn’t put as much energy into searching orchids as I did last year, this turned out to be an orchid intensive summer anyway. I’m still basking in the glory of finding the alpine chamorchis, at long last!

A little bit surprisingly, I don’t have any plans for next summer. I don’t even have plans for the winter. Or next weekend, come to think of it. The long term plans depend very much on what I get done with the cabin – if I get it built next summer, then naturally all my spare time will be spent on that. Now that’s something to look forward to!

I needed to make some preparations for my cabin in Messlingen and that was just the perfect excuse to take out a day to do some photography in the mountains as well. I checked three different weather forecasts and they all said different things, it could be anything from rain to sunshine and in between but changing weather can also bring with it some wonderful light so it wasn’t all bad.

The first photo op came up at the Väster-Storbäcken brook near Mittådalen. I always make sure to check it out when I drive past but it’s been years since I’ve stopped to photograph it. I was wondering if I could do anything I hadn’t already done here, but it was easy in the end – on with the ND64 and polariser and I was able to get down to 20 secs to get that silky smooth water. Add a small stitched panorama and I was happy!

I had a plan for the day but a lot depended on the weather of course. We had barely started when the rain came, but it was only a local shower and we could see in the west that the sky was getting brighter. Which was just as well, because I had planned to drive west anyway to Mittåkläppen and Djupdalsvallen (any excuse for a waffle). When we got there, the promise of rain was still in the air so we had our waffles and waited for it to clear. After a while it did look better, so we set out on foot and as if by magic, the sun started to break out when we got to the ridge! It was absolutely fabulous with the afternoon sunshine and dramatic sky, which got us into a photography frenzy because the light could disappear at any moment so we’d better make full use of it. I can’t claim that I spent a lot of time contemplating over my compositions but this was such a gorgeous place that it didn’t really matter, it was looking good in almost any direction. The intensive clicking of shutters stopped abrubtly though when we heard something that sounded very much like thunder, accompanied by a big dark cloud. The top of an open ridge is not a place where you want to be when the lightnings start striking, so we packed up quickly and made our way back into the relative safety of the forest and hoped to reach the car before the raining started. It turned out though that it wasn’t as bad as it had looked at first, so a few drops of rain is all we got and a few pictures along the way as well, because we couldn’t resist stopping when we came across an opportunity, darks clouds or not!

There’s a nice little tarn next to the Mittåkläppen road with great views towards Skarsfjället. In the right light and calm weather it would be a great place, but this time we only really got one out of  two – it was calm, but the sun didn’t want to show itself again. Very dramatic skies though, a worthy subject in itself.

Since it looked like the cloud cover was lighter in the east, we decided to drive back to the Ånnfjället view instead of waiting and hoping for the light to happen at Mittåkläppen. Chasing the light this way is a bit risky – you can’t really ever be sure that the light is still there when you are but this was a calculated risk on my part. The weather fronts often get stuck in the mountains between the Norwegian and Swedish border, so further in the east your chances improve for good weather. Well, that’s my theory anyway and stick to it, because the light was indeed still there when we got to our spot! Frantically I unpacked the camera and set up the tripod, all the while hoping that the light would last a few more seconds so I could get at least one frame. The light did last, a whopping 20 minutes that gave me the best pictures of the day!

This is the first time I’ve visited the mountains in August. I was surprised to see the signs of autumn everywhere, this is quite clearly a time of transformation when the summer ends and the autumn begins. With the weather as it was today, it all made for a few memorable minutes of magic light that proved beyond any doubt that changing weather is a photographer’s best friend!

Yesterday I visited the real estate agents that are selling the land I’m interested in. My first offer was rejected, and after a couple of days of consideration I upped the offer. I got a call back an hour later – they said yes! Wow… I’ll be a landowner!

This morning I popped in at the real estate agents’ and sign the papers. So now it’s official – well, other than the minor detail where I part ways with a humongous sum of money. And this is just the land… the idea is to build a cabin, too! Yikes, what did I get myself into?

So, happy birthday to me. And happy Mothers Day in Finland! In honour of the big -oh, I’ve decided to finally do something grown-up so I will buy/build myself a cabin in the mountains. I have many reasons for not wanting to buy a house, but once the idea of a cabin was introduced it just felt so right that I have to go ahead with it. I love the mountains, I belong there – now I just need to find a piece of land to build the cabin! I’ve already looked at a couple of sites but they didn’t really click, so now I have a want ad on Blocket. I have the whole summer to find the site, and then in the winter find someone who can build the cabin. Fingers crossed!