An archive of articles on hiking in Finland

Jouni Laaksonen 31.1.2022

Hello, all my readers! Sorry for being so quiet for the past months. I am alive and active, but I just haven’t found time to write blog posts. And I suspect the situation is not going to change any time soon. I just finished with one book manuscript, and the next books, several of them, are already agreed on with my publishers… So, I continue doing what I love: writing about hiking. 🙂 (All of this writing happens in Finnish, there are no new English books coming from me as far as I can see.)

I wanted to cheer up your day with a pic from a day trip here in Northern Finland. It has been quite a normal winter here: lots of snow and temperature constantly well below zero. This winter has been quite cloudy so far, so one January weekend when the sky was blue, we headed to a day hike with my wife. It was good to ski on untouched deep snow, the sunset was magnificent, and as a bonus we saw a herd of black grouses. First one popped out of the snow just in front of my wife. We thought it was the only one and smiled to each other: what a nice surprise to see one black grouse. Then another flew out of his snow cave, then another, and in the end it was a herd of ten. It’s amazing how they bury themselves completely under the soft, deep snow, and you cannot see a sign of them before they fly out of the snow!

I may write here sometimes in the future, but I promise nothing. It’s been great to share moments of hiking in Finland with you. Thanks for all my followers, all of you readers! And if you just happened to bump into my blog, know that there are more than one hundred articles here about hiking in Finland. Scroll down, use tags or use search. I’ve written on walking and canoeing and skiing, long distance hiking and ultralight hiking, animal tracks, wilderness huts, hot days on natural beaches, super cold winter hike in Lake Inarijärvi, autumn colors, how to make a fire in winter, and so on. Happy hiking to everyone!

Jouni