Tales of Home [2]

Eldorion wrote:Great pictures, Norc!  It's awesome that you have so much wilderness and trees so close to where you live.

 Yeah, almost my backyard  i should share some mountain pictues too, but i haven't been yet.

Worked now. I was using the image hosting thing on the forum. Switched to my photobucket account.

Trees Norc!  And here I was thinking you were too far north in a treeless tundra.
If you have woods to walk in all is good in the world!  

Lance is that a spooky really big Orthanc like tower far away casting a shadow- or something small but a lot closer?  

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Trees Norc!  And here I was thinking you were too far north in a treeless tundra.
If you have woods to walk in all is good in the world!  

 
yes, there are some really nice woods here  though it doesn't give out the "ancient feel".

Petty - you decide!

If I could make decisions I wouldn't have to bloody ask Lance!  

Cracking pics Norc, lovely blanket of wildflowers- the only real difference I see in trees is your trees are a bit thinner and shorter in general.

yupp. shorter and cripled  if they are tall, they're tall and thin

all this just across the football field outside my house.

Very handy.  

indeed.

By a strange coincidence I was in a wood myself today.I was passing by and thought Id go hug a tree for Azriel and get some canopy pics.

This is the wood-



This was a cool stump (sadly lots of trees here had to go after the severe high winds and storm damage)-



These were some more really tall foxglove too-






And these white ones are much less common in the wild, you tend to see them more frequently in peoples gardens-



You stumble on some odd little places in a wood-





And some tree hugging pics for Azriel(sorry some of them are a pic crappy, my shitty camera had a hard time working out what to focus on)-

that circle reminded me of a strange religion...

Yeah, best not to visit around solstices....

yeah

Half inspired by Petty's little trip in pictures a few pages back, half inspired by the first chapters of LotR which I have been rereading in sunny Turkey, I decided to take some pictures of my own on a little two-day trip I went on with a couple of friends. I used an iPod camera, so the quality is rather poor, but they're watchable :)In this post you won't be seeing trees as beautiful as those in Norc's posts as the trip went into the fell (this seems to be the word for what fjordians call snaufjell), and there are few trees in such landscapes, and next to none as you get higher. Our goal was to ascend a mountain called Trollhetta, which is located in an area called Trollheimen (there are various translations of the name, but it could mean both "The home of the Trolls" or "The Troll's home"). As I said, this area lacks the beautiful trees found in other places, but nevertheless it has its own charm, and some of it looks rather Middle Earth'ish

We started our little trip from a parking lot and the first hour on foot went along a gravel road, and I didn't take any pictures of it. This is the first picture I took, a kilometre (0.621 miles) or so after we had left the road (though we were still following a path):



A bit further in we came upon a nice little stream:



The road goes ever on and on, and Three is Company (with me taking the picture in the back, of course!):




After a while the goal of the journey became visible (once again, sorry about the poor quality, but our goal was the mountain you can see with snow still on it):




This is a typical view in Norwegian mountain landscapes - the little huts of the sheepherders. They're scattered all over, and people still use them even to this day:





Meanwhile, our goal drew ever closer (in the distance you can see yet another sheepherder's cabin to the right of the lake):



At last we decided to set up our camp here, from where we could see the goal for tomorrow's march clearly:



But before that of course, there had to be beers, karsk and food, roasted over a fire:



Day 2 of the journey to come, though that post might be shorter (or not!)

loving the pictures Ringo ^^ makes me wanna go hiking myself

btw, you don't do much to put down the rumor of Norway being troll-infested

We all know it is Norc, and the more you Fjordians deny it the truer we know it must be.  

Loved the pics Ringdrotten, reminds me a bit of the highlands in that nothing grows more than a couple of foot tall there either, at most. Places like that have a stark beauty your pics capture well.
That pic of the fire too made me pine to go camping so much!
Looking foward to day 2!

Wow ! they are ALL fantastic pics ! We all live in or near beautiful places, & its great to capture the moment ! They all tug at the heart strings for me wanting to end up deep in the countryside. Today was meant to be unbelievably hot, & it certainly came close !! Evenings like this, that have a magical quality about them, I light candles that are scattered around my garden, each in a little coloured glass holder, it looks lovely, little glows peepng out thru the foliage. And, on nights like this, where it feels like Herne the Hunter is near, I sleep outside on a sun lounger & take it all in. I feel that Im not part of THIS world but, of a world long gone but I can just touch it, just.
(thanks Petty ! for hugging a tree !  )

Day 2 - to the mountain we go!

Unfortunately, what awaited us the morning the next day (or in other words, this morning) was fog - the mountain that yesterday had been perfectly visible from our camp was now completely hidden! Though we knew where it lay, and lower down in the landscape the fog wasn't as dense, so we set out:





The foot of the mountain was as covered in fog as it could have been - a few metres up and we could see nothing!:




Though from yesterday we knew roughly from where we wanted to ascend the mountain, so we trodded on, and the view from the hillside was good for a little while still:




Here we stopped to refill our canteens:



From this little stream and onwards, however, the fog was all about us:




About an hour or so on our way up the wind drastically picked up speed, and it started raining really badly - I would have posted a picture, but I wouldn't risk ruining my iPod taking it. We found shelter and sat there for a few minutes. We had just begun discussing the possibility of turning back, and were throwing our backpacks on in defeat when suddenly the fog drew away, and the rain stopped! "The mountain wants us to continue!" we thought:



However, we hadn't walked for more than three or four minutes before the fog was suddenly surrounding us once more - the mountain had not invited us to continue, but rather tried to tell us to f*** off, and in doing so kindly offered us an easier way down by drawing away the fog and stopping the rain. Now he was angry again!:





We decided nonetheless to try a little while longer, but due to the fog and our compasses running haywire for some reason, we had problems sticking to our course, and after a while we struck the snowy parts which we had meant to circumvent. Though it doesn't look like it in the first picture, the snow streches widely, and knowing a thing or two about snow it was easy to see that this was avalanche terrain. We tried to find a way around it though, and shortly we came upon a path (that looked to be man-made) that went through it:






Safe path or no, the snow proved too difficult to pass through, and the fog, rain and wind were making jokes of us all - at last we admitted defeat and began the long journey down again:



And, as if in our spite, shortly after we began the descent the mountain once again drew aside its curtain of fog (though this time it allowed the rain to hammer upon our heads and jackets all the way down!):



And thus ended our attempt to ascend Trollhetta - in defeat:x Having just recently reread the chapter about Caradhras I sort of understood what Tolkien might have had in mind when writing it - mountains are not forgiving, and the weather in high places changes as quickly as a wizard is angered (To be honest, our experience today was strikingly similar to the Felloship's in Caradhras, I thought!) We hurried back as fast as we could to our camp, had a short rest and some food, and then started the long walk home. A shower and a real supper tonight was a bit more welcome than they usually are

Loving the story, now i really wanna go hikiing, fog and rain and all that  the pictutes were great ^^ i am just sittinh here comfortably in front of the fireplace with the ipad (i think i broke the telly ... If your recording stuff, don't click "info" at almost the same time, the whole shit just froze) 

evocative pics Ringdrotten ! Could so easily be of LOTRs as you say ! Also shows who's boss in this world ! It looks so cold & that your not really wanted ? I bet a warm bed will feel heavenly tonight !