CAULDRON LAKE GRYTA OSLO. Ann Tuesday 8th May2012.

Yesterday was a day of scudding sail ships in the sky, and we too took flight from the tops descending into the valley steeply to glimpse the frieze of pale blue ripple in a stripe across the darkened ochre black of the Cauldron lake, its crown around it of pointed fir tree forest, its turquoise yellow sandy deep in one place, where the sun penetrates the water in a seductive manner, making a picture of paradise that waits just for you to step in. 

We walked the usual edge, passing through dark woods, stepping over stones and roots, balancing across boggy patches where the grasses are a beautiful even golden yellow, and lie as Winter put them, sometimes so beautifully evenly over a stone, or tousled like wild troll-lady's hair that catches the webs of floating birch pollen at the water's edge.

I noticed those bits of wood, fallen branches that are dark viridian green, and remembered telling the little children to look for colour in the Winter woods, the orange of the birch bark, the blue of a beetle, the blue green or bright ochre lichens, the golden grass, the ochre waters etc.

There was a curious gathering of stones at one place, they were formed like a big sofa at the front, and at the back the sofa was convex, like a breast, it was made up of the stones from around, they had what looked like black iron glaze fired into them, probably the devil when he made pottery had made them and lost them in a volcano. A Troll Throne!

The place where there is a rocky top, the remains of bonfires, the view down to the start of the walk at the end of the lake, blue sky reflected white clouds, deep dark waters where the forest, in shadow, casts its spell in the liquid that gives it life. Here where I brought some of the bigger children from the kindergarten, up on the hill, they clambered on the rocks and even went out along a traverse crack, parallel to the lake, balancing along carefully, I kept a good eye on them, and helped with ideas as to where to put their feet.

On deeper into the wilds, where no other person was met within the two and half hours of the walk. The tree pipits have begun to fly up and sing on the way down, the opposite to the skylarks, the chaffinch follows, the robins each started up as we came, defending their territory with their jubilant song. Deeper into the dark green, along a path, across a fairly steep slope of rocks, trees, grasses and bilberries, looking right down through the sun-dappled firs and pines, and up to the rock summits; oh we sighed with delight, as we hadn't been on exactly this path before, climbing, and climbing, winding about up the hill. The sun shone on us in the open parts and we got hot, although in the morning we had felt the cold as the temperature wasn't high.

Excited to see the top we carried on, this was the furthest we had come along this valley, too far when we were younger, and here we were two old fogeys going and going on. We were rewardedm as the path of glacial rock, grey among the sparse pines, twisted by weathering, and the plunge of the eyes down, down into the sea of the forest, the young birches here and there among the dark green a sharp contrast, looking like the fountains in the Alhambra, spraying golden green light among them. The same movement as the tree pipits, heavenward.

We sat a good while on the top rock and absorbed the view , the sound of silence, the occasional small plane searing a scratch of white across the sky, the dull buzz of a bee, or the hum of the occasional mosquito, all adding to the lethargy; not knowing that that northern sun, having lost a lot of ozone layer, burnt hard, my cheeks, and when I touched my eyes they hurt to my surprise, each cheek too red. But it was worth all.

Erik even blurted out that it was the finest walk in the whole Oslo area; I wouldn't go that far, but in the heat of the moment, it was. No people, perhaps for miles. Just existing, like the trees that have stood there all their lives, existing. Such times fill the mind, the soul, the body, all, and can be experienced anywhere later in life, like taking the pebble from a distant beach, out of your pocket, and pondering, it came from there, and there is there now.

We were fairly exhausted and had to go carefully, as going down steeply balancing on rocks and muddy footholds, we couldn't afford to fall, after all how could we get back if we fell and couldn't walk? No helicopter could land in this terrain, so passing moose dropping heaps, heather, bilberries and the sun-baked earth we slowly, well we never go slow, you would call it fast, even tripping, made our way along the tops and down again to the lake, passing also the place where the Canterelles grow in Autumn; if we are lucky we get some, but the locals know about them too!!

We met one man, his eyes red, his face white, his look that of someone very sad, perhaps suffering from hay fever, dressed in an old tight fitting wind jammer, his walk slightly surreptitious, perhaps that was only our imagination as the rest of him was touching on ominous. We smiled and said "hei" of course, but he didn't return the smile, just nodded. Erik said he wouldn't like to meet him in the dark.

At the beginning of the lake again, the water warmed by the sun, filtering through the fallen trees making lovely ripple patterns on the grasses under the surface, amber coloured, then the balancing over the small birch tree trunks that form a bridge where the lake spills down the little gorge to the Maridal Lake, eventually.

Ah yes, we are so lucky. Then tea/coffee on the veranda in the sun again.

And today:-

CAULDRON LAKE June 7th 2012. ann

You shall see, we walked down the steep skogsvei to the Cauldron Lake, where the leaves have come out since we were last there; the blue stripe still on the water from the sky, in fact there were two places where the blue was special, as we neared the end of the walk we passed a little lake and on the far side were grasses, bog kind of grasses, they made a blue stripe too, and I zoomed beyond where I can hold the camera still but was too fascinated to let it go.

The walk was uneventful, but every moment interesting, along the Grytevann to go beyond deep into the landscape, far from any roads. The diagonal hill of tall firs and pines, the occasional birch between, was beautiful, looking down through the wood deep where the sun beamed and lit up the many bilberry bushes that make their green carpet on the forest floor all over Norway.

Having passed a strange kind of cairn-sofa, the path finally went steeply up to the west, left, and we soon arrived at the top, where there were many Bonsai-like small pines clinging in cracks to the bald smoothed granite top, where we sat to eat our lunch. Watching the ants, one ant was trying to pull a piece of food uphill, bigger than itself. The woods below making a depth that gave us wings in our imagination.

Then the return along the same top parallel to the Cauldron Lake, through such green woods, many fallen firs, lifted their private gardens of bilberries vertically, making a wall, the underside of them showing how shallow the earth is and how difficult it must be for the tall trees to manage when buffeted by strong winds.

On the way through the short growing new treed tops we saw an ant heap, it looked like a castle, the cairn was used as the heap, the ants making their gatherings of needles and sticks in between at the different levels; a tower of Babylon!
Down a little valley where the bog once a pond was where we saw that deer had helped themselves to water, now dried up, although the moss was still quite vivid in colour.

We always love going along past Grytevann, the lake with the turquoise, viridian, prussian blue and green reflects like an agate stone.

stan this is prose! Ann