Moose – Scenery – Night Time Dog Sled
Unfortunately I don’t have any more photos of the dog sleds… So if that’s why you’re here, soz…
Today was a bit of a drive around. We thought it’d be a good day to go Moose Spotting. Not something people do every day. Apparently it’s not something that is always successful. We’re driving on a road, and there are forests everywhere. We can hardly trek into the snow for kilometres looking for moose who can hear us a mile away and would quickly scarper. But we had super guides David and Peter… I swear they just make a phone call and tell whomever is on the other end of the line… “Okay we’ll be up in 30, so if you could tie the moose to the usual trees by the road and we’ll see you shortly, just hide their leads. Good chap” I am sure that is pretty much word for word what happens.
We headed north past Kiruna into some long roads and forested areas about half an hour. There were plenty of small towns around here and always a nice straight expanse of bitumen between them. The roads lined with trees, and the occasional house and apparently moose. All in all we saw 9 of them, or so we counted. Probably 5 were on their feet, with the others laying down in the snow. The first one we encountered was with 2 calves, who were quite camera shy as they moved around hiding from view. The remaining moose (over a distance of about 2-3 kilometres) were proably 30 metres from the road. Some behind houses, others just chillin’ between trees or in the open.
When we saw one, we would stop quietly on the road. I was on the side facing them (they were all on one side conveniently) and I would very stealthily open the sliding door of the van, lean out, and eventually leave the van without making as much as a single sound doing so. Need not have bothered. They couldn’t care less. They were out “People Spotting”. Being very very quiet sitting in the snow, camoflauging themselves so they wouldn’t scare us away, as those funny 2 legged animals moved around the cars pointing big long bits of glass toward them. What a show we gave them. I’m sure they have some lovely memories.
And like many other days, the morning sun was beautiful. Peter took us to a couple of different places including some boat sheds (there is a river in that field of snow) and we wondered around taking some quite pretty landscapes in that very pretty place.
We moved on to a bridge with a river winding toward, under, around and away. We were probably there for something more than and hour, but not two. People in their own zone taking their own photos. Some landscapes were obvious targets and likely photographed by everyone, but not two images would be really the same, as we all have our different styles. Some people found a path under the bridge, whilst others like myself stayed in the close vicinity and worked the camera from there. There was no pressure to shoot, it was just such a delightful place. Sometimes the fog would roll past, the cabins and houses in the exact right place, needed to ground an image in scale and construction. The river winding in different locations, either wide and expansive or winding and compressed with the lens choice. The perfect snow with shadows caused by a shielded sun, or the twigs protruding that would otherwise be just everyday ground cover. All in all, just Wow covers it pretty well.
And to that few hours, comes to an end as we returned to camp, but the day wasn’t over.
For many, including me, the absolute best bits of travelling isn’t about the scenery, although that can’t be underestimate on this trip. But it is about culture and people. It’s about they way they live and the things they do. So it should come an no surprise, that despite the Dog Sled trip at night, for me at least, the best part was listening to our Dog Musher, Nora tell her stories about the dogs, and what they mean to her. To hear about her adventures in a 1600 kilometre dog sled race in Alaska just as the world was shutting down with Covid. Having contacts that enabled her to get her dogs back home via a U.S. Air Force cargo plane, or risk being parted with them for many months, if not years.
The group met at the Dog Sledding Kennels and were shown the area in which they live. Each dog has a quite a large space, but share it with a couple. The pups are off in their own pen, with an experienced dog to show them the ways of their early life. Everyone needs a good example, right?
Like the earlier trip on the sled, we travelled in two groups with our sled leading the way. Through the forests on a track, across a bridge that we used earlier in the week for our Aurora photographs, through a swamp with water making it’s way to the surface and onto the river and leaning the opposite way on the sled to stop it cracking, and ended on a frozen bank of the river where another Lavvu was already erected, waiting to be used for a photographic opportunity at night.
The dogs were happy just laying for an hour or two, occasionally making some noise when something was creeping amongst the trees. Once one goes off, the rest follow, but they were quiet for the most part.
A candle was placed in ther Lavvu to provide some atmostphere in what was actually quite a bright night, half of the sky lit with nearby towns, or the waning crescent moon rising in the east, but yet to be seen.
It was a surrel location as I moved away from the Lavvu, as I thought whilst it was lovely, it was not my style to shoot something so, um… obvious. Not that it’s bad for anyone to do that, it’s just not my style.
I preferred the ridiculous scraggy trees that were just to the side.
To me, the background sky made it look like it was a studio shot, of trees somehow placed in this location. What an eery quiet night this was. If it wasn’t for the cresent moon, instead of a fullmoon, I would have been more on tender hooks.
We finished the night by having a nice traditional coffee in the Lavvu with a couple of small heated cinnamon buns warmed on the fire. The final ride back to the kennel was so quiet, excepting the occasioinal conversation with Nora. The trees lit up by the sky looking like figures from a Tim Burton movie. The snow looking like a hooded face of a stringy old man reaching out his white bent snowy fingers toward an oncoming sled, alas; we were too fast for it. I wouldn’t want to be alone in this forest at night.
I want to finish the Lapland Blog with a couple of other small, generally unrelated images to the trips we made.
My small, yet lovely placed “panarama cabin” at the Aurora Camp near Kiruna and the view I would wake up with.
And with that, the Lapland adventure was about done.
Steve Hunt 