[Leica] a sad postcard

[ruben at rhodos.dk (Ruben)]

This weekend was very sad to me, my wife and to my children. We went to our 
little house in the forest in Sweden to check out the damages of the great 
winter storm the devastated large areas of southern Sweden in January.



It would be too much to go into details of how my house (a "torp" *) is 
placed in the landscape except that it is behind a very small hill before a 
rather long hill/slope of about a mile down to a large Lake.



Until the storm a large and very old forest surrounded my property, with 
beautiful stone fences covered with moss and lichens and trees so big that 
my little family hardly could reach around them.



It was the kind of forest were you could discover new secret places and were 
you could sit a summers afternoon in the middle of the forest enjoying the 
birds, insects and the wonderful scents of flowers, trees and mushrooms, 
while the rays sun would find its way thru the leaves and paint the fairy 
like grass and moss with scattered light.



I have known this place as my second home for all most 40 years and both my 
girls has spend most of the summers since they were born, the oldest even 
took her first steps/walk on the bumpy grounds out side the house.



For the first time in my life I found it hard to use my camera - even though 
my house and most of my property had made it thru the storm every were I 
looked trees were either turned over with root and every thing or the most 
proud and stubborn trees were simply snapped over like matches. It was so 
bad we could not find the little road that led up to our house, there are 
now landmarks left - no secret and fairytale like places left - no beauty 
only a wasteland!



It took much strength to comfort my youngest - she cried - her "smultron 
st?lle"** was gone, her little hill further in the forest were she used to 
take her dolls and play was gone and even the place were she saw her first 
Moose looked like someone had turned everything up side down.



It will take 20 years to get the places to look just nice again and it will 
not look like old forest in my lifetime - but I hope my children will be 
able to show my their children some of the Sweden I have so dearly - Had it 
not been for the many birds, some deers and a couple of other "wild" animals 
curiously looking at us from a safe distance I would not have been able to 
hold back the tears but their presence gave me comfort that Nature might 
sometimes be tough on us but life will go on.



For me the loss of 40-50 larges trees on my property means only that I will 
be chopping fire wood for a very long time, but for some of my neighbours - 
the nearest is about 5 miles away - it is really bad as the have lost 1000 
of sq. metres forest that will get little paid if they can find help to get 
it "cleaned" up before next winter.



This is a sad postcard with no pictures attached but with an advice to 
embrace and enjoy places dear to your heart while they are still there - 
best Ruben



* Torp is a very small house were the poorest people lived - people who did 
not have enough land to live from it but worked for the large farmers. In 
1965 a 97 year old woman died after living in the Torp all her life. She had 
one cow and she did some sewing and stuff for other people - she never 
married. Behind the wall paper we found newspaper-wall paper from 1880. In 
my area it is the last Torp left  - two rooms and a very large 
fireplace/stove - very primitive and very lovely.

** Smultron St?lle = your own place in the forest were the wild small 
strawberries grow - a ver Swedish thing