Il Dolce Far Niente: Sunday hike; observing autumn in a forest, Finland

August 2011

(this pages takes a while to get fully loaded as it contains a lot of photos, sorry about that)

After observing becoming autumn in archipelago last two days, wanted to see how autumn had arrived in forest. A good place for week's recovery and a Sunday hike was in Luukki recreation park (a forest with numerous small lakes), about 20mins drive north from Helsinki.

In Luukki, a forest north from Vihdintie road belonged to Nature Preserve Area. It did contain several hiking path and that's my favorite area to wander. Sometimes I come here for running, too.

Still a fantastic weather continued, although rain and thunderstorm predicted for late afternoon. Plenty of cars at parking lot in Luukki, not only me who'd thought it's a good place to charge your batteries and enjoy nature.

Met and saw people wandering in forest with their wooden baskets, a sign that a mushroom season had started. That proved to be true as I spent lots of time shooting photos of different species of mushrooms. I didn't pick up any of them but knew now becoming lunch; risotto con trombetta dei morti (a.k.a. black chanterelles).

Autumn had arrived in forest and was much more visible than it was in archipelago. Trees had started to drop their leaves, there was plenty of yellow color everywhere. Saw a quite big variety of different type of mushrooms. Silence had arrived, too, as bird singing was rare. The area contained lots of small, very dark brown colored lakes and several bogs. Smell on bogs was fantastic.

People around lakes prepared their camping lunch while children went to swim. Some people in their running leg had a swim break, just to cool a bit, and then continued their run. That's awesome!

Somehow I got a feeling that I'm ready for autumn, thanks to a long and warm summer.

Hiking route stored by GPS (View Larger Map):

Mushrooms