Oulanka winter tracks
Booked this trip months ago. Winter Finland is a specific thing I wanted to experience and I was lucky to get the kind of perfect cold-dry day that shows snow tracks cleanly.
We snowshoed with a guide from the park office. No big-mammal sightings — but a lot of evidence. A set of wolverine tracks crossed a logging road, very clear, very fresh. Our guide said it was his first wolverine track of the season. Lynx tracks further in, paired and confident in the way lynx always seem to walk. Snowshoe hare in dozens. Red squirrel. A single fox.
Birds: Siberian Jays came right to us at the lunch stop. They are the kind of bird that’s been hanging around human fires for a long time. Siberian Tits (Grey-headed Chickadees if you’re American) in a mixed flock with Willow Tits. A Great Gray Owl flew across a clearing late in the day and that’s the only bird I really wanted to photograph more of but the light was gone and I was already happy.
The landscape is itself a thing. Pine forest white with snow that doesn’t fall off for months. Tree limbs loaded like they’re carrying something on a tray. Photographs can only do a little of what it feels like.
We ate rye bread and cheese with our hands in gloves and drank coffee from a thermos. Good day.
