The weather forecast said that it would be raining today but not very much so I decided to hike locally and took off to the Svartmorgraven ravine. When I got up on Flatruet, I found that the clouds were very low and the visibility was in fact quite poor. For a moment I was wondering if I should continue at all, but then I thought that it doesn’t matter if it’s zero visibility, there’s no risk of getting lost – the route is on a straight east-west axis so if all else fails, use the compass. As I was standing there and considering this, some reindeer ran past. A big bull stopped on a hill close to me and for a moment we were looking at each other, with his magnificent antlers silhouetted against the fog. I knew there was no point in reaching for the camera but when I saw the next reindeer approach, I did just that and got a silhoutte out of it, even if it’s not nearly as good as the big bull would’ve been. But no point in dwelling on lost opportunities, so I put away the camera again and walked into the cloud.
Very soon I noticed that the clouds were in fact dissipating. I started to see the mountains in the south and even saw a bit of sunlight in the distance. The colours on the tundra are spectacular this year and now that it was raining, the colours were saturated despite the clouds, but I couldn’t figure out how to shoot them though in any meaningful way.
When I reached the ravine and started to grab the first shot, the camera strap got tangled and stuck my eye when I lifted the camera to my face. To my horror, I felt the contact lens come off the eye and although I was able to catch it, it blew off in the wind before I was able to protect it. Losing the lens didn’t make me blind but it did make me very very annoyed. I was using monthly lenses and I didn’t bring any spares with me, so I can just throw away the left lens as well and use glasses for the rest of the holiday. When I’m thru with these monthly lenses, I will go back to dailies for sure…
I’m very strongly both right-handed and right-eyed. I can’t look through the viewfinder with my left eye and I found that I didn’t see it clearly without the lens, so I just had to rely on the autofocus to hit the mark.
Although the Svartmorgraven ravine is normally very nice, I didn’t feel like staying around now that I was one lens short and it was raining anyway. But as I was walking back, I was getting used to having a fuzzy vision and I saw that the cloud cover was breaking up towards the south, sending out beams of light that I did my best to capture. When I was almost back at the trail which leads down to Messlingen, the sun finally came out and I almost laughed out of frustration… I didn’t have any wonderful subjects at this point, but I did get at least something to remember it by. And then the light disappeared again, as soon as I found something that would’ve looked nice.
Despite the weather, a lost contact lens and chafing boots, I managed to spend 7 hours on this trip. It seems like tomorrow is another rainy day and it I will use it for resting. Experience has taught me that I have a tendency to push myself too hard when I don’t want to actually sit still and relax during any vacation… more than once I’ve come home a day early and gotten sick just for the exhaustion!