I don’t always have to get to the top of a mountain… sometimes it’s nice to just walk around it. So I drove to Bruksvallarna and took a very long time walking up to Kariknallen, because there are a lot of flowers here and I was equipped with a macro lens. Shooting more macro was one of my goals for this summer and this is about the first time I’ve used the lens! Which is a pity, because my photographic roots are in macro and shooting macro is what feels most natural to me. Not that it shows up in the results, because I ruthlessly deleted all my flower pictures but one. I think the reason I haven’t done macro lately is that I’ve already done everything I could think of… there are only so many ways of shooting a lapland marsh orchid, you know?
But one flower that I haven’t managed to shoot in any meaningful way as yet is the moor-king. It’s a tough one because the same individual can have overbloomed blossoms at the bottom and buds on top, so it’s very hard to find one which is looking nice overall. And then of course it’s a big flower so getting enough DOF without sacrificing the background is another dilemma. So the result is that I don’t have any decent pictures of it. But, sometimes it’s enough just to try – because as I was evaluating this one individual, with the camera in hand, I saw a moose run in the background. Moose with a macro, it’s actually not even the first time I’ve ever done it!
After eating a waffle at Kariknallen, I followed the trail north to get around Kariknallarna. The most interesting thing along the way was the moss with water drops inside it – I have never seen this before, I don’t know if its common or not. There was a lot of water bubbling from underground so my theory is that these drops are formed when the water comes up through the root system. Or maybe it’s rain, but the drops really are inside the moss.
After rounding the northern end of Kariknallarna and going towards the Svalåtjärn shelter, the weather turned a bit worse. The wind picked up and it started raining, not that it worried me because I was dressed accordingly. And when I looked west, it seemed like it was already clearing, so I decided to wait out the rain in the shelter and it actually only took a few minutes until the rain had passed. So I continued my hike and by the time I passed Kariknallen again, the sun was out. I didn’t get a lot of pictures from this hike, but I have to say this once again – it doesn’t matter. I love hiking, it really is my favourite activity!
