Every spring, in the middle of May, I feel the call of the wild and head north, as I have done for the past four years. I hit the road again, hitchhiking across Germany to reach the ferry at Rostock. From there, I took the ferry to Swedish Trelleborg, where the full spring awaited me, with roaring rivers, buzzing bees, and whispering green trees.
I returned to a place where time goes by at its own pace, sometimes even backwards, making a man feel younger. It’s a place where one wakes up energized, purified by fresh air and nature, and hardened by the wilderness and healthy alternatives like hunting or gathering. I spent fantastic evenings in undisturbed nature, watching hours of alpenglow. On my journey to the mountains, I passed through Skåne and Stockholm, then turned west towards the Härjedalen mountains.
In Härjedalen, I helped with reindeer, worked in the forest, rode bikes and boats, fished, and hiked on mountains. After that, I moved to the national park of Rogens, where my friend Jakub joined me. In Rogens, a park full of crystal clear tarns and lakes of glacial origin, and pine bonsai trees that look like they were captured in a storm due to the prevailing winds, we spent several weeks. Rogen was created during the ice age by glaciers, but now tundra and forest-tundra prevail, and everything is overgrown with mosses, bryophytes, blueberries, and many other berries.
After a few weeks in a wooden cabin in Red Bay and on a boat, we decided to hike across the mountains to Norway’s national park, Femunden. Although we didn’t carry much food, the challenge of pure nature full of fish and all the time in the world won us over. We trekked across mountain peaks to Norway, where another valley of lakes awaited us. We followed a descending plateau to Lake Femunden. From there, our journey led us a bit further north to the coastline of Namsos, where we decided to walk around the islands connected by bridges.
We took a ferry to the Sømna region, and after that, I said goodbye to Jakub and went south to Hardanger for the harvest of fruits. In Hardanger, September announced itself with a snowstorm on the other side of the fjord, on the borders of Hardangervidda. After the harvest, I hitchhiked south through sunlit, colorful forests, and in Larvik, I enjoyed the last few days of Indian summer on sandy beaches. Still with sand in my shoes, after some adjustments to the size of my backpack, I took the plane to Prague.
