Geocaching, Raspberries and Rain

August 18, 2008 · Posted in Cabin & countryside, Geocaching

Friday

Last weekend I finally had time to go to the cabinside – my fortress of solitude – all alone. I once again got on the way a bit later than I would have wanted, which meant that I arrived around seven in the evening. There was still plenty of light out, so after I got my food in the fridge and everything else unpacked, I pushed off to the lake to case out a place for my first geocache and to pick out one which I hadn’t found in the wintertime.

The evening was extremely relaxing. I rowed about 8km around the lake, climbed on a cliffside of a rocky island which I had chosen for the site of my first cache, and found a great hiding place for it. I once again surprised myself by not being particularily tired after that. I spent time finishing Penny Arcade adventures, but after a very late night sauna I didn’t need much help falling asleep.

A view down from the top of the cliff.

Saturday

Friday evening had been sunny and the lake had been calm, but Saturday dawned cloudy and rainy. I set together the cache, rowed back to the island and spent some time hanging a bit too high for my comfort without a rope.

Climbing to the cache site.

...and there it went.

There were some kayakers having a picnic on the island and we started talking about the layout of the island. They told me about this one island owned by the local church and used for confirmation camps and such. Apparently one of the buildings on the island had burned time some time ago, so of course I had to go and check it.

It seemed that there had been some time since the fire, because the place was pretty well cleaned up and the foundation of the building was used as a some kind of an open air platform for speeches and such – at least judging by the chairs set nicely on one side of the foundations. There wasn’t that much to see there, apart from some charred trees.

The foundation had been cleaned up and the old fireplace used as an open air barbeque.

A nearby shed was as bit charred too.

Plus a large pine some way off the ruins.

It started raining a bit, but not severely. I returned to the cabin, had a very quick and light lunch and packed up some stuff for a trip to another geocache, one that required going through something that looked (and turned out to be) trackless forest. Luckily I ended up taking a rain cloak with me, since the weather didn’t really take a turn of the better.

There's an old road, which hasn't been used in a long time. The nature is starting to reclaim it in a beautiful way.

There is an old road, which hasn't been used in years and the nature is starting to reclaim it in a beautiful way.

Don't know if this happened by itself or if someone dug up the road on purpose.

I ended up trundling through something that was more or less open swamp, very thick stretches of planted birches (thick as in having visibility of two meters), jumping over ditches and going through stretches of chest high ferns. All this protected by just a flimsy rain cloak and wearing running shoes, in pouring rain. The experience wasn’t bad, though – quite the opposite. The air smelled fresh, the forest was quiet and beautiful and whenever I started feeling even a little pissed off, I ran into a batch of raspberries which were so ripe that they fell from the stalks when you brushed the bushes. I must have eaten a liter or two of them during that trip, which according to the GPS took four hours and spanned about eight kilometers.

The small rocky hills covered with lichen practically glowed in the rainy afternoon light.

There were a lot of bushes nobody had apparently found at all this year. Maybe because they were right in middle of a godawful thicket nobody in their right mind would bother walking through.

There were a lot of raspberry bushes nobody had apparently found at all this year. Maybe because they were right in middle of a godawful thicket nobody in their right mind would bother walking through.

For some reason I wasn't hungry at all when I returned to the cabinsite.

In the end I didn’t find the geocache, which was hidden in or near a very small bridge meant for riders. I was muddy and wet, but no amount of crawling around the banks and hanging down from the bridge revealed the hiding place. In the end I didn’t mind, though – when I finally got back to the cabin, I was so wet that I have literally fallen on bodies of water and come up drier. The caffee and the carelian pies tasted incredibly good, not to mention the pork chops.

The rest of the evening was spent waiting for my clothes to dry, saunaing and playing Runaway: A Road Adventure. The premise of the game sounded good and I was a bit surprised about the mediocre reviews it had got. Not so after I actually played through the first few chapters. The game wasn’t bad, but it was old-school in all the wrong ways. By this I mean completely illogical and contrived puzzles, that didn’t make a lick of sense most of the time, plus a shitload of hunting barely visible items and having to check bags and such again and again, because more stuff popped up in them. The game had its good moments, though, so the 12 euroes or so I spent didn’t feel like wasted money. When I realised I was progressing mostly with a walkthrough, I called it a night.

My plan was also to try and look for some mushrooms, but I didn't find any I recognized as edible.

Sunday

On Sunday morning I woke up feeling incredibly good and alert – it had been ages since I had slept that well. I spent the rest of the day chopping and stacking firewood, before it was the time to start packing my stuff. The atmosphere outside was perfect – it was cloudy but reasonably warm, there were high winds that made trees hiss and billow and no mosquitoes anymore. Pure zen.

The weekend was very good, the only thing to complain about was the fact that somehow I managed to lose my iPod. I didn’t take it to the forest trip, at least as far as I remembered, but the damn thing had vanished. I spent an hour turning over the cabin and the car, until I gave up and left for home. This will be making the rainy day trips to work rather boring, though. Well, win some, lose some.