Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Danish Winter "Bushwalk"


One of the things you learn as a Dane is to seize the day - carpe diem - at least during winter! The day is so short that you just have to get out there and do stuff while the sun is visible or you will hit a winter depression as dark as a ploughed field around Balling - we got some super rich dark soil up there! :-)

Jet-lagged or not, quitting was no option and we hit the fields for a brisk "bushwalk" around Balling - the brisk part was mostly just to keep warm ;-)

Walking around down here in Australia, I cannot help falling into the trap of remembering Denmark as a place without nature. That is absolutely rubbish, of course we have! However we have only tiny tiny bits of nature that have been allowed to develop freely since the last ice age (ice ages have the habit of resetting the countryside in a quite dramatic way - a bit like wiping a blackboard clean). All the human manipulated nature is not all bad though, heaps of wildlife lurking around; deer, hare, fox and lots of birds - even during winter.

Ah well, enough of all this nature talk lets see some windmills I can imagine you asking(?) Jep, jep - no worries any landscape photographer in Denmark (at least in the dark end of Jutland) will either have to be a contortionist or skilled in the art of Photoshop to avoid catching a few mills per picture .. that is obviously not right .. if you are standing in a valley :-)

It was a fantastic day for walking. We started out with the mist lying so thick that we should have brought machetes to cut through, as we moved along on our two hour hike, it cleared up so well that conditions were nearly rivaling a blue-blue Australian desert sky.


Great guns, super duper walk and as we arrived at the house I managed to take advantage of the light by taking some close-ups in the garden. A bit of snow brightens up everything including pictures and plants are excellent stand ins as models they do not complain and will stand still if conditions are right :-)

While I was running around I noticed that I started getting streaks in the photos from snow flakes falling down, strange we had just managed to get a blue sky and everyone knows that snow never stays around Denmark for long .. and then it started to snow for real!! to be continued

4 comments:

Jarrod said...

I haven't seen a good frost like that for about 6 years, good stuff.

AGL said...

Not many Danes have either - it was/is a good proper winter in Denmark, not seen alike for maybe 14 years.

Aleisha and Simon Iremonger said...

I cant keep track of all your adventures Allan? Do you actually work or do you just travel the world spotting birds?

AGL said...

Ah, I would have said that looking at your blog it seems Canada is being used quite extensively. Actually, having time to write your blog means you have spare time :-)