Text and photos: Jyrki Liikanen
Text and photos: Jyrki Liikanen
Out of the corner of my eye I see a small movement, and at the same moment I hear a twig snap.
My mouth is dry, and I'm fetching water for coffee from a forest pond after a night of photography in the small hours. A break was well deserved, as I had spent many hours moving about and taking photos in the summer night. Reisjärvi's Etelä-Sydänmaa offers photographers what feels like an endless supply of subjects.
But what on earth was moving nearby? I don't dare move, even though I'm in a slightly awkward position with a camping stove pot full of water in my hand. I notice I'm holding my breath...
Etelä-Sydänmaa is a truly wonderful place for a nature photographer. Many people really don't know what a real ”forest” looks like, being used to walking through and seeing only managed or unmanaged commercial forest. Here – in the soft twilight of a summer night – the silvered pines, fallen veteran trees, ancient pines and ferns glistening with dewdrops, horsetails, spiders' webs and countless other small subjects set the imagination going.
The sounds of a summer night here in the wilderness are something else. Amid the light mist rising from the lake I see a pair of black-throated divers fishing. Their primeval, powerful song sends shivers down my spine. The territorial calls of swans carry from somewhere further off, their echo repeating faintly before finally fading into the mist. I hear black woodpeckers, great spotted woodpeckers, willow tits, coal tits, a goshawk, a raven and many other birds. If you can just stay still for at least half an hour, the forest comes alive around you. Look, there's a woodpecker hole in a dead pine right next to me – and I can hear chicks inside. And there's a rotten birch stump. That would make a perfect nesting site for a great grey owl.
At the edge of a wide boulder field there was a large anthill torn apart by a bear. Fresh elk tracks could be seen at the edge of the bog – perhaps it was watching my movements from the other side? I know for certain that a few wolverines roam here, and I saw a lynx's trail while skiing on the late-winter snow. Even an otter had slid down a slope into an unfrozen stretch of the stream. Here, if anywhere, animals can live in the peace of nature. Of course the network of forest roads reaches here too, but relatively few people come. Hikers mainly follow the fine waymarked routes of Peuran polku, and you rarely see an angler on the shore of a forest pond any more. For a nature photographer who blends into the forest and moves unobtrusively, there is plenty of space and peace.
…the coffee water is starting to feel heavy in my hand as I try to stay perfectly still.
Now I see it! It's a big forest reindeer stag cautiously approaching the shore of the still pond. How close it is, and it has no idea I'm here. What magnificent, enormous antlers it has, still in velvet, as it stands proudly there in the mist. In an instant the stag vanishes back into the forest, silent as a ghost – did I really see it?
That would have made a great photo. But the camera was left at the campfire site – of course.
Perhaps it's better that way. Your own memories are often better than real photographs – and they aren't shown to anyone else.
Jyrki Liikanen
Professional nature photographer, photographer and videographer