I first came across this poem by Yeats in the British miniseries "Sex, Chips and Rock'n'Roll".

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.


W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)
"He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven"
from the Collected Works of W.B. Yeats

During our hiking trip in Norway this quote by Thoreau came suddenly into my mind:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

8 days outdoors in Europe's far north.
8 times 24 hours sun, wind, endless skies, starry nights, wild berries, lush moss, campsite fires, refreshing baths in clear cold creeks.
walking, chatting, being silent, living with nature.
a heavy burden on my back.

slowly tuning in with nature.
feeding on blackberries, mossberries, lingonberries ... even raspberries like a flock of sheep on a mountain pasture, where the huts are made out of wood like at home, but seem to be more refined, neatly cut wooden planks painted red, this particular tone of Northern red, grass-covered roof-tops - look more like holiday homes than farmhuts.

giants entering a miniature world
with its unknown secrets
its multiple trees, plants, creatures.

what do we know about it?
what remains hidden to our eye?

an almoste endless sky
the eagles are mounting into

wide empty landscapes
wherever you turn

scattered gold-clad birch trees
with black lichen hanging over their branches like ghosts from another time

soft-pink gravel under my feet
a gaze into the wide country

then i tread on soft velvety cushion-like moss
sinking in to another world
smells of fairy-tales



lunchtime at a lake


tiny flora