The Quiet Picture

We drove to Gröntjärn today, the idea was to shoot pale pasque flowers. I was sure they would be in bloom or at least budding because the spring is slightly early this year. The weather wasn’t too good, overcast and cold (there were snowflakes in the air at one point), but the pale pasque flowers are nice even if they’re not open. So I was prepared for all this, but I was not prepared for not finding any pale pasque flowers at all! I couldn’t believe it, I was standing right where I’ve been shooting them in the years past, but now there was nothing. After some searching I finally found one plant, with just tiny leaves. This is like a deja-vu from last year when we looked for the flower in a place where they were abundant 15 years but almost all gone now. So I’m totally mystified by what has happened. However, now that I’ve had some time to to think about this, I remembered reading last year that the pasque flower can skip blooming some years and then pop up again when the conditions are right. I just always assumed that they are a sure thing at Gröntjärn… And what’s wrong with the conditions this year if they’re only resting and haven’t completely died?

Since there was too much wind to make anything out of the lake itself, we drove on to Hornberget. I’ve been on top the mountain once before, that was in 2001 – the 6th of May 2001 to be exact, I wrote in the guest book which was still in the small cabin on top. The oldest entries in the guest book are from 1995 and there’s plenty of empty pages left in it, so there’s not much traffic up here. Which is a shame, really, because the view is fabulous! You can walk to the cliff’s edge and look right down at the tree tops and the occasional falcon flying below you. There’s a 200m vertical difference from the car park to the top and I reckon the cliff drops straight down at least a 100m, if more. That’s an impressive cliff in this region!

It’s been over two years since my last visit to the Gröntjärn lake, so I was really looking forward to today’s trip. Gröntjärn is one of my all time favourite (photo) locations, and I used to enjoy every visit there. And there were plenty of visits, during those five years I lived in Ljusdal.

The most interesting thing about this little lake is the water level. I’ve seen it at almost flood level, and I’ve seen it shrink into small pools. Today, it was something in between, and as beautiful as ever! Judging by the shoreline, it looks like the water level hasn’t been very high in the past years. Plant life is decorating the shores with its greens and even trees are starting to get a hold on the slopes. But, come next flood, and the shores will be stripped bare again.

What a great day, visiting an old favourite and finally doing that long motorcycle trip I’ve been talking about. Lovely!

It feels like summer already, sunny and warm. I decided to make the most of weather and took a couple of hours off to drive to my old hunting grounds north of Ljusdal. I especially wanted to see Gröntjärn again and I was hoping to get lucky with the pale pasque flowers (Pulsatilla vernalis), normally they are in bloom at this time but it could also be too early… but nothing I could do about that, I can’t drive up when I have on call duty because there’s no mobile phone coverage, and next week I’m on call. When I turned to the Gröntjärn road from Svartsjöar, I was surprised find a good bit of snow by the roadsides. At a few places the road was soft and muddy as it tends to be at melt, but I got through fine. Eager to see the lake, I parked my car and walked to the bowl without the camera gear to take a first look. I was expecting the water level to be low and that it was – very low. I got back to the car to get the camera and set down to business.

I was interrupted abrubtly by a woman with a young boy in tow – they had driven in the ditch about half a km from Gröntjärn towards Västerstråsjö and couldn’t get out and wondered if I could help. I followed them to their car (which turned out to be a van) and realised that there wasn’t much I could do. The van had well and truly sank in the waterlogged ditch and only one of the wheels was doing any work and even that was just slipping on the ice. I was glad I had come via the southern route, as this northern bit of road was in a worse shape with a lot of snow left. She had winter tyres on the van but a quick look revealed that she probably had less grip in them than I had in my summer tyres. We made a futile attempt to put branches behind the wheel but since the van wouldn’t budge, it was not able to make use of the traction provided. Anyway, not much else to do in this situation than to call for help. But… no mobile coverage, as I mentioned earlier! I had to drive back to Svartsjöar before I was able to make a call and order a tow truck to release the stranded van.

The picture is obviously nothing to cheer at, but I couldn’t really complain to her that she didn’t ditch the car somewhere more photogenic!

Having done my good deed of the day (of the year? Decade? Life?), I concentrated on the flowers. The incident had taken about an hour and a half but there was plenty of light left so no worries. Time just flew by and I had some trouble with the flowers because the wind was swaying them hard, those big blooms function as sails and the flowers were hardly still at all. When I finally checked the time, I realised that I had to stop right there – I needed to buy some food for the weekend and the stores would close soon, so I packed up all the gear and splashed my way through the mud once again. I’m so glad I washed my car yesterday.

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Snowmobiles. Gröntjärn is a nature reserve, where snowmobiles are forbidden by law. I have however seen snowmobile tracks there before, and now even in the melting snow I was able to see traces of them (look at the Gröntjärn picture above, on the right). Please excuse my French but… fucking morons.