While totally flush with gratitude for all the marvelous experiences that had been had thus far, the fact remained that we had only reached Day 3 of the trip with many more yet on the program. Also our yearning to reach the end(s) of the earth and the task of figuring out just what that means had yet to be satisfied. It was time to move on to Lapland and points north; the Arctic beckoned though it was still a few days away.
As we bid Oulu and the Airport Hotel adieu, we were bestowed with one final unexpected gift of the best kind: while passing the same field where we’d seen the short-eared owl the day before, we had yet another encounter with the same species taking flight (same bird? it is possible, but excuse me for saying short-eared owls tend to look alike), only to be joined by a second bird, the two of them flying together for a time before going their separate ways, not in some deep woods or wilderness area or on a lonely beach but over some farmer’s meadow in northern Finland. At this point I am tempted to say if I never see another owl in this lifetime that would be okay, but of course I’d be lying.
The countryside changed steadily but subtly as we headed northeast towards the ski resort of Ruka, our next stop. Farmer’s fields became ever sparser, and the woods more in dominance, and there were ponds and lakes everywhere. If Minnesota is the Land of 10000 Lakes, it’s got nothing on Finland which supposedly has more than 180000 or something like that and does that mean somebody counted them all, and does each have a name? Maybe they’re all just numbered. We did not investigate most of these though Matti stopped at a few, where various new waterbird species turned up, scoters and goldeneyes and common mergansers but still no smew and does that really matter? We saw our first red-throated loon, on a nest on a small island on a pond surrounded by woods. We’d seen many a loon on the ocean in our day, usually at a distance on bitter winter days in New England, often disappearing for inordinate amounts of time only to resurface far away – the first time Matti had spotted one on this trip he’d called it a “diver”, the colloquial name for loons and quite apt. This particular bird was not going anywhere, and was far more visually striking in its breeding plumage than all those birds we’d seen back home.
We had yet to see a reindeer, but at a gas/comfort stop they had reindeer and moose jerky (moose are “elk” in Europe, just like hawks there are sometimes “buzzards”) on a display and whodathought the world of jerky would encompass such a thing? What’s next? I had no recollection of seeing bison jerky back in Yellowstone, but capitalism depends upon new product development and created needs and the jerky market holds much future promise, without a doubt. Walking breathing reindeer would turn up soon enough, everywhere and in abundance from this day until the trip was over. They often seemed as clueless about the dangers of moving vehicles as many Boston pedestrians, and this couldn’t be a good thing, though it might help supply the jerky market.
We were also heading directly into Matti’s home neighborhood, and were blessed with the unexpected privilege of having our lunch stop at the summer home/camp he’d recently started to build on a lake deep in the woods not too far from his house. No electricity or indoor plumbing, bird houses and feeders spread all around, with sleeping quarters here and there. It was somewhere for extended family to hang out, away from it all, though for us most everywhere we went was feeling kind of away from it all, by most measures. Except for downtown Oulu, nowhere on this trip had we felt very far removed from the natural world, and that sense of closeness became more pronounced as each day and mile passed. It was an interesting contrast to how it had felt the previous fall in Yellowstone, the iconic “wilderness experience” if there ever was one, where traveling the roads and staying in surrounding towns and cities took on a theme park aspect. They say the only way to savor wilderness in the American west is to backpack, which makes a lot of sense as otherwise you tend to be part of a crowd of people. Where we were in Finland, people were scarce and nature was in your face, right there on the roads.
Except maybe for Ruka, where we overnighted the next few days. Ruka is the premier ski resort of Finland, partly because it sits atop what is likely one of the very few suitable locales for the sport in a country that is mostly flat or rolling. and an impressive operation it is, indeed. At least it looks that way, though this was summer and things were a bit quiet. The thought crosses one’s mind that it is dark in Finland in the cold months, as in all the time, which suggests that the lighting at Ruka must be world class, and maybe the place is visible from outer space come December. All we know is the hotel room had a heated closet for drying clothes which presented a golden opportunity to do a wash.
Ruka not only lies north of Oulu, but also well east. Those good at Finnish geography might ponder what this means, but first allow me to report on our next truly memorable bird sighting. As you might assume, to a true birder every single species is memorable, even the drably colored ones that flick in and out of sight in an instant. This birder is not ashamed to admit he is more attuned to what one might call the “cheap thrill” school of birding, where the best birds are showy and distinctive and allow long lingering looks. The bird in question was the Siberian jay, very special to this trip insofar as we were at the westernmost part of its range, one that spans the boreal forest across Russia. The jays of this world are known for being “smart” by human measures (as are all corvids), are able to use tools and show reasoning skills. They also tend to be tame and gregarious, will sometimes take food from one’s hand. To draw this particular bird into the open, the chosen bait was bits of sausage (reindeer sausage? Matti did not indicate) stuck onto branches of a bush, and also a piece which he held in his outstretched hand. The whole effort succeeded admirably, and the jay in question made the most of the opportunity (did I say they were smart?), eventually absconding with every piece. And like all jays, it was lovely to behold and looked distinctly different from the many jays we’ve seen before, which is a lot of species in a lot of places at this point, not just the ones constantly squawking in our backyard all months of the year.
As we traveled a bit further through the network of dirt and gravel roads and dense woods of this place, we finally came upon a gate with a warning sign, kind of a geopolitical special moment, engineered by our guides. If the point of a trip or “vacation” for you is to get away from it all, this would’ve been a rude awakening, as the sign denoted a “no civilian” zone for the next three kilometers, after which the road crossed the border with Russia, a particularly special moment for our group of baby boomers, all veterans of the Cold War. The camera aimed our way from the tree behind us added a special note of creepiness. Were the helicopters already on their way to check us out? If they invaded, would the tanks roll down this very road, from off in the distance, there? Were they coming at this very moment, and why had nobody told us? What would Tom Clancy write about all this? Of course, the Siberian jays could not care less about any of these things, so long as there is sausage in it for them. Nature is like that.
Memorable in a different way was our witnessing the golden eagle passing over these forests, displaying. “Displaying”, as the word suggests, is a kind of showing-off, which breeding male birds do in all kinds of fashion, but in this case the behavior seems to involve big mid-air swoops. We were to see this with little birds during the week doing little swoops, snipes and meadow pipits and bluethroats and such, which was all pretty cool, but here’s this gigantic bird doing monstrous swoops that were quite the thing to behold even at a distance. Of course, we Americans are prone to favoring the large and showy, just look at all those big truckish things that now constitute the “family car” on our country’s streets and roads, and even on Boston’s former cowpaths where it can be a mighty tight squeeze, indeed.
On the last day around Ruka, we spent some time at a national park, a big one that extended into Russia and was managed jointly between the two countries, or at least had been in better times. It was a place off limits to hunters and private property and quite lovely, with a wild river and a waterfall and some good new birds (white-throated dipper, for one, in just the kind of place dippers everywhere favor) and it felt a bit more untouched and remote than the usual Finnish woods or countryside, but not by much. It was “wilderness”, Finnish style, in its way a bit reminiscent of the American west, but while here the woods were thick and undeveloped and covered a vast area, the “developed” countryside outside the park limits held a wildness that seemed not all that different to this observer, who knew he wasn’t in Wyoming or Montana anymore, where the mark of people and civilization had seemed ever present, even with bison and moose and wolves never far away.
