Rubberboot walk on Luukki forest

October 2012

Visited Luukki Nature Reserve and its Recreation Area a week ago.

Autumn time has been very wet in Southern Finland. There's been so much rain that ground have stopped to absorb water, leaving it on the ground.  If you'd like to step off from the road while on nature, better to prepare getting your feet wet. Or alternatively, wear high rubberboots and make sure where ever you walk there's less water than your boots allow to keep your feet dry.

That's exactly how I prepared to go for a walk at Luukki, about 20km north from Helsinki. Actually, I wanted to see how much there was water in the forest.

Luukki area has been my favourite area for outdoor activities for a long time. It's near, it's far enough, it's real outdoors, there's many type of nature and so on. It's really easy to reach there by public transport not to mention by car/bicycle etc.

Weather was lousy, very cloudy and such a high humidity that it felt like a constant light rain. Took a DSLR with me, wanted to record the state of nature on a wet and cloudy Autumn day. As I was an owner of only few kit lenses I knew that taking proper photos handheld with them was difficult.  Didn't want to carry a tripod, which would have helped a lot though.  Decided to take only one lens, a 35mm f1.8 prime lens, which hopefully would give a bit more playground for a handheld photography.

Decision to wear rubberboots proved to be right almost immediately after leaving the Luukki parking lot. There seemed to be water everywhere in the forest, crossing nature paths here and there.

It did look so fresh green in the forest. Bright green. Fantastic view despite a miserable weather. As a matter of fact, it's been on my mind a long time of how to capture a badly looking view of nature into a photo. It seems to be a much more difficult task than always trying to take good looking nature photos.

As usual, there were lots of other people on nature paths, too. Families with children, with dogs, a group of blind people with their guided dogs, runners, speed walkers. You named it.

Below are some photos I captured there, which explain the state of the day and period as I saw it. Lack of tripod is quite visible in most of these photos (as well as a lack of proper lens). Changing a photographer was out of the question.

Walked map by GPS, some 10km route (view in a larger map):

Some photos

A self-portrait, in a bubble

Time for rubberboots

The state of usually dry mire

An ugly view, or is it?

A dark forest

Prepare to get your feet really wet soon

A flow

Haukkalampi pond

Threesome with a hiccup 

Erosion by human

Usually there's a walking path here

Wet wet wet

Haukkalampi pond

Autumn colours

Dead calm, almost

A lonesome tree

Still some left

Floating

Damage

A stream

Mustalampi pond

I did the same when I was a kid, so why not

On surface

Reflections

10cm rapids

Into the dark forest

Inspiring colours

A modern outdoor highway

I can smell it

Spare parts

Waiting to save somebody

Into the dark waters

Have I told you I like ferns?

Lessons learnt; use a tripod and delay a mirror in your DSLR

A path

Birch trees look nice on every weather

A bit more water and I'll bring a kayak