Sunday, January 6, 2013

A horse is never anywhere near a fire

On Friday I went with the two oldest daughters to lake Halkolampi at Luukki, walking beside the lake to the fireplace at the north end. We had picnic there, and warmed by open fire.

There was a logging operation going on at Halkolampi, and I had a few words with the lumberman, who was felling and cutting up the trees by hand using a chainsaw. He had used a slit bonfire (in Finnish, rakovalkea) for warming up, and remains of the fire were still in place when we left. (See here for how to construct a traditional Finnish rakovalkea.)

In my teens I did some forestry work at our farm, and we used a horse to transport the felled logs out of the forest during winter. I have managed to hit myself in the foot with an axe, and once I cut my knee with a chainsaw. Luckily I was wearing cut-protection trousers so I only got a small cut which didn't even bleed much. But I guess such accidents are not altogether rare if you work as a lumberman.

As a sidenote - and speaking of photography - Mark Hobson pondered the art of making photographs, and in the comments there was a link to an excerpt from a speech by the Finnish photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen, telling about "The Helsinki Bus Station Theory: Finding Your Own Vision in photography". Highly recommended to anyone interested in taking and making photographs.

(Posting title is from the poem The Wooden Overcoat by Rick Barot.)

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