LAND 41 Driving to the start point, the dawn was fine and still, the sky ablaze with intricate patterns of golden, orange and yellow – the rain and gale force winds forecast for the afternoon seemed impossibly pessimistic.
Instead of enjoying the expansive sky, my route took me straight away into the shadowy, tangled, overgrown rift valley of Blåskinsdalen. Here it was dark and silent, a jumble of ivy, fallen boughs, fern, moss and granite.
I emerged close to the sea cliffs and headed north along the coastal path. I had walked this very route during the KYST project on a very cold and sleety day in March five and a half years previously, and my mind was full of memories and reminiscences of that time. Soon, I arrived back at the Vang quarry, close to where I had been last week.
Again, I was seduced by the intricate and savage shapes and structures of the vertiginous granite quarry walls and decided to really get into them, although I knew time was already running away from me. After an hour or so, however, the wind started to pick up, and before long it started spitting. I tried to cover the paper as best I could but was ultimately forced to seek refuge in an old quarry building, recently converted into a fine shelter.
The rain increased in severity, and I was trapped. I tried looking through the rain and painting the quarry. Birch trees were already changing colour to yellow.
My unhappy and gloomy musings were thankfully interrupted by the joyous sight of a great tit and a wren, also seeking shelter from the rain.
Great tit and Wren
Eventually the rain lessened in intensity, and I walked on, through the village of Vang and onward to Finnens Top and Slotslyngen. I had long been looking forward to wandering around and painting in this area, but the weather had other plans. Once again, I was forced to take shelter, this time under my tarp, as the wind and rain built up again. I tried to paint the exposed granite, heather, and juniper typical of the region, but was buffeted and beaten by the wind and rain and soon everything was a wet soggy mess.
Soaked through, I continued along the coastal path for a while with wonderful views over the sea, where menacing bands of rain bruised the sky and cast dark shadows on the sea.
I walked on, over the open exposed heathland and into the enchanting forest of Slotslyngen, full of twisted oaks and grotesquely twisted birch and pine, glad to be out of the howling wind. The rain had mostly stopped now, and I headed south again, out into the open heathland. In the teeth of the gale, my mood switched back and forth between desperation and exhilaration.
Back into the cover of the forest again, and completely exhausted now, I headed north and east along overgrown forest paths. This was a new area for me, a beautiful nature paradise with a patchwork of forest, open meadows, small flooded quarries and a generous scattering of deer hunting towers (see top).
The days are so much shorter now, and after having spent so much time under cover, I never made it to the day’s end point. I was equally exhausted and overstimulated, and the day was over.
LAND 41
WEATHER REPORT – Spitting or raining most of the day. Temperature 9 – 17 degrees. Wind 5 – 11 m/s, from the southwest. Hours of precipitation: 5 hours. Hours of sunshine: 0 hours.
STOPS with the BIVVY – 1
KILOMETRES WALKED – 12.04 km
DAY LASTED – 10h and 42 m
PEOPLE TALKED TO – 1
BIRDS SEEN and HEARD – 26 species (1 new, Brent goose) = 131 species in total.
LESSONS LEARNED – Take a lighter instead of a matchbox on wet days
IN MY HEAD – I thought a lot about the structure of the LAND project – about how it can be both a blessing and a curse to create rules and frames within which to work creatively.
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