Wow! It’s great to be alive

The picture shows rain-soaked forest floors – no match for powerful tree-harvesting machines and harvested trees cut in equal lengths stacked here and there.

Clear-blue sky. Just chilly enough for the snow to reply to my plodding and

septuagenarian footsteps with scrunching sounds. Snow clinging to the branches of the spruce and pine, the low afternoon light brilliantly illuminates their tops. Snow, deep enough to barely cover the low-lying blueberry and lingonberry bushes on the forest floor. I pause. Look around. Wow! It’s great to be alive.

Another mortal interrupts the solitude of the first half of my trek, wild animals greet me during the second half. It’s the middle of January. From October until now there haven’t been enough frosty nights to fill out a count on two hands. Finally winter! No more gray, rainy, windy days.  Not a sign or sound of civilization. Delightful! Wow! It’s great to be alive.

The buzz of the Swedish National Defense overhead punctuates the silence. Suddenly three-foot wide and two-foot deep ruts appear before me. What’s going on here? I continue. Rain soaked forest floors are no match for powerful tree harvesting machines. A delightful hike in the woods turns into a task. Per, the recent near hurricane blow, has left his calling card. For the modernized lumberjacks, this is a matter of get. Get the windfalls harvested, come hell or soft forest floor. Get them before the bark bore gets them. Get your money out of them. Now!

I scale the stingy path between the machine-carved, water-filled ruts. Slipping off it, a foot cracks through the thin ice. A boot full of water. A few hundred meters on and the other foot slips. Water up to my knee. My right foot freezing. The left one now not far behind. Wind fallen yet-to-be-harvested trees everywhere. Harvested ones cut in equal lengths stacked here and there.

Soon my favorite, now scarred, winter path is a cul-de-sac. Nothing looks like it used to. How to continue? Retracing means more misery. I gingerly trek on into the deep, forbidding spruce forest. Am I lost or misplaced? Stories of old farts dying in circumstances like these roll around in my head. Don’t panic. Use your head!

Road sounds. Brushing away twigs and branches in my path, I move toward them. Eureka! A path I’ve known for years in front of me. I know exactly where I am. Not more than a quarter of a mile from my doorstep. What a relief! Wow! It’s great to be alive.