Month: January 2025

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In the Woods after a Storm

I’m finally getting out for walks in the woods again, after a long pause, mostly caused by poor weather. This week there is a pause from storms, both wind and rain. The air is refreshing at about -1 degree centigrade. Getting out of the house in the middle of the day gives me some much needed daylight.

About 10 days ago, in the afternoon of Friday, the 17th of January, our area of Trøndelag in Norway was hit by a storm with very strong winds, of hurricane strength in the gusts. The power went out for us about 4 pm and we didn’t get it back again until noon on Saturday. At its peak, there were about 40 000 homes without power. The main reason the power was out so long was that the wind had blown down an enormous number of trees. One of the contributing factors for so many trees down was that the ground was not frozen and there had been quite a bit of rain in the days before the storm. So when I went for my walk today, I was interested in seeing how much damage had been done in our local area.

The morning after the storm we had noticed several large trees across the road leading to the cabins beside us. Today they had been at least partially removed. There was also a tractor and a man with a power saw working on cutting down other trees that were no longer upright.

The road leading to the cabins beside us. Three large trees had blown over, but have now been cut so they are no longer blocking the road.

Most of the trees that are blown over in the wind are spruce trees as they have very shallow roots. A strong gust of wind, from a slightly different direction than the tree is used to, will often make them fall over, with their roots in the air. The main way to help the trees is to have a mixed variety of trees standing together so that the roots are intertwined and the roots from deciduous trees help hold the conifers in place. Solitary trees will be affected more, as are the trees on the windward side of a grove of trees.

As I reached the crest of the hill that I walked up, I saw the following, a pile of logs and a bigger pile of branches. Note that most of our snow has disappeared now.

The farm Rotvoll is in the background, but I noticed a stack of logs and a lot of branches on the field.

So I started wondering if all those trees had come down in the wind, or were they planned logging? It’s hard to know, but I wonder if it was a combination of both. My walk takes me down the road that goes off to the right in the distance. Locally it is known as the Golden Toll Road, as it is a private road and normally has a locked bar across the road.

The Golden Toll Road is missing the bar across it. The bar was laying safely on the ground. From the stack of branches at the right, I’m guessing that some of this was planned logging.
Signs of where the trees had been taken out. Had these been taken out before the storm? They don’t look like they had blown over. Certainly their removal makes the road more open.

As I continued along the road, it was quite obvious that at least some of the trees were taken from along the road. This is quite a shady area in the summer, so I can imagine that the cabin owners wanted some of the trees taken out, to make it brighter along the road and so that trees were not hanging over the road. Whoever owns the land will also be able to sell the trees for lumber, a common source of extra income for farmers.

Here was an area where quite a few trees had been taken down, but it doesn’t look like they were blown over in the wind. There are heavy tracks on the ground made by some large, probably logging machine, which indicates it may have been done before the storm.

My walk continued from this road that leads to many cabins to a path through the woods. Over the years that I have walked through these woods, there are always changes. Old trees break or fall over in winter storms. New trees sprout. Those who are responsible for keeping the trail usable usually go along the trail in the spring and make sure the fallen trees are cleared away. This trail is part of a longer trail that goes about 20 km from Vangshylla to Straumen (which is 12 km away by road).

Though there were no trees obstructing the car road, once I was on the trail there were still trees blocking my way. I had no problems getting around these ones.
Another tree that had blown over, but it was easy to walk around. The roots were so shallow that there wasn’t much holding that tree upright, if the wind suddenly came from a different direction.
More trees blocking part of the trail, but I go up to the right and don’t have to worry about the trees straight ahead in this picture.
This picture illustrates how shallow the roots can be with these spruce trees which are growing up on a steep, rocky slope.
The view from Bear Cliff, looking across to the island, Ytterøy, and Levanger behind the island.

The goal for my walk was what we call Bear Cliff (in Norwegian Bjørnbrøttet). There is a book in a box where I wrote my name. I was the fourth person to write my name in the book in 2025. It hasn’t really been good weather in most of January for walking in the woods. The first names for 2025 were recorded yesterday which was a Sunday.

As I continued my walk, taking a circular route for as much as I can, I came across one place where there had been damage to human-made things, though thankfully not the cabin itself.

Here there had been damage in the storm, so at least some of those trees on the field had been taken down after the storm. The cabin owner will have some repairs to do this summer. Thankfully the trees and blown down away from the cabin itself and only damaged the stairway. There is still a considerable mess to clean up.

The rest of my walk was quite uneventful. But I don’t need to see the results of a storm every time. Just walking amongst the trees is enough for me. I used an hour on today’s walk and I must try to prioritize doing more such walks. Getting away from roads and people can be very pleasant. I got back home feeling very refreshed and motivated both to write this blog and to do similar walks.

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The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

Subtitle: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

Published by Penguin Press, 2024

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We are all aware that computers, the Internet and smartphones have changed our lives considerably. This is independent on how much you actually use them, but everyone is expected to have a smartphone, filled with apps, both useful and not so useful. We have had computers in our household since the 1980s and it is a crisis when there is no access to the Internet.

But what is this doing to young people, those who are still growing and developing and learning to be adults? We can all see the headlines, no matter where we live, about how teens in particular are suffering more mental ill-health and this ill-health is affecting how young people are transitioning from childhood to adulthood. The author is particularly concerned with the generation born after 1995, often called Gen Z.

I’m finding reading this book a bit tedious as the author goes into a lot of detail and repeats himself a lot. I am not enjoying his writing style and haven’t actually finished the last few chapters. It seems like it is written as an academic book, but trying to appeal to the general reading public. The purpose of my blog is to save you from having to read the book by making a short summary of the main ideas in the book, though I am also interpreting what the author has written. If you have the book, my opinion is that once you have read the Introduction (which is 15 pages on my digital edition), you have gotten the basics. The rest of the book is just giving the details and the evidence of the author’s main ideas.

The Internet and Smartphones

By the year 2000, the Internet was becoming both available and used by many people, both at work, at school and for leisure activities. What had become a useful tool for sharing information, especially over large distances, became a tool for large companies to make money. New products soon developed and this book is particularly concerned with the smartphone, the small-sized computer that fits in your pocket and has access to the Internet almost anywhere. Not only the development of the hardware that fits in your pocket, but the software it contains became addictive. Software developers learned how to make it almost impossible to put down your phone as they put in an endless scroll mechanism.

If you think you got hooked easily, think how easily it became to get children and teenagers hooked. Children always use the argument “everyone else has one” to get their way, even though the initial argument isn’t necessarily true. But what damage is being done to our children and teenagers when their time is spent on a small box in their pocket? What are they not doing, that we who are older, perhaps did at their age?

Free play

When I was young, children were expected to fill in their free-time themselves. In the wet winter months, we played indoors at each others’ houses, using our toys and games to create our own imaginative worlds. In the warmer, drier summer months, we spent a lot of time outdoors, running around, playing outdoor games, perhaps climbing trees, etc. As we got older, we roamed farther from our homes, being allowed to go to shopping areas on our own, perhaps by bicycle. Some parents did a lot for their children, but most parents expected their children to fill in their after-school hours themselves. There would be some organized activities which for me were music lessons, choir practice and Brownies/Guides. But there was still a lot of time to decide for myself what I would do.

Play is how children learn. Small challenges are overcome. New challenges encourage learning new skills. Learning how to interact with others is an important part of learning as well. Learning what risks one is willing to take is very individual. As a child goes through elementary school, there are new boundaries to explore and to push outwards, both physically and mentally.

But according to the author, free play began to decline in the 1980s (partly depending on where you live. In Norway, there was still a lot of play in the mid-1990s.) Adults became overprotective. The expression “helicopter” parents was common where we live. Children were no longer allowed to explore on their own and test their own limits. Limits were set by adults. Organized activities were all that were allowed outside the home. In some places, children taking buses on their own were considered “neglected” and the parents could be punished. I remember in Grade 3, at about 8 years of age, taking the bus with a friend to the local ice rink to go skating, about 2 km away. No problem. We were learning how to become independent, a necessary step for all children. One small step at a time.

Phone-based childhood

Once smart-phones became common, even for children and teenagers, their use expanded very quickly. They were easy to take to one’s own room. One could use them at any time of day or night. Access to the Internet was rarely restricted. Large companies may have had rules as to how old users had to be, but it was no problem for children to learn how to lie about their age and get access to adult websites.

Now social interaction came through apps on the computer or phone. Young people spent much less time interacting face-to-face with others either their own age or with a variety of ages. Making eye contact with the person you were talking to was seldom. Getting likes became important, but was much more impersonal. Girls became hooked on social media, such as Facebook, while boys became hooked on games and pornography.

While in the real physical world, there were all sorts of restrictions to what children and teenagers were exposed to, in the virtual world there were very few restrictions and young people had access to websites and apps that were meant for adults. Heading online was fun and addictive. But children and teenagers are not learning the social skills that they need to function in the adult world of independence, supporting themselves economically, and finding someone to share their life with on a more permanent basis.

Guidelines for a healthier childhood

These four guidelines are suggested by the author. Most of them require groups of people to work together to be able to enforce them. Some need government regulation.

  • Before children are about 14 years of age, they should only have a basic phone, not a smartphone. No unlimited access to the Internet.
  • No social media before 16 years of age
  • Phone-free schools – lock them away during school hours
  • More unsupervised play and childhood independence

The author has children and is concerned for their development, so his suggestions are based on what he feels suitable. These are not guidelines that parents can enforce individually, but ones which the community, either locally or nationally, have to be agreed on to be able to restrict their usage.

Whether you are a parent, grandparent, or an otherwise concerned adult, I suggest you look at your own use of smartphones, computers and other digital devices. Are you in charge? Are the devices running your life? Only you can know the answer to that. What adults do, influences what children learn to do. If you want children to stay off the Internet and smartphones, then you will also have to restrict your use of them. Thus, I’m going to finish this blog and go outside to “play”. We have lots of snow now, so there are things to do away from screens. Have a good day!

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Winter Weather

Winter at Vangshylla, with extra lights to cheer up the lot. Picture taken on 3 December 2024 at 16:32.

We live in a part of the world where it snows in the winter. It is also dark a large part of the day during November, December, January and February. Today, the 8th of January, sunrise was at 9:52 and sunset at 14:52, so officially light for five hours. However, how bright the day is depends on whether the sky is clear or not. On cloudy days, it can seem dark all day long if one doesn’t get outside and one needs lights on inside to be able to do anything.

Winter at Vangshylla with the sun slightly above the horizon and the clouds. Picture taken 8 January 2025 at 12:04. The tracks in the snow are made by deer.

I’m writing this blog while taking breaks from moving snow. We have a long driveway so it takes many hours to clear the driveway well. We got heavy snow on the 2nd of January and it snowed for several days creating chaos in many places. Among other things our garbage bins were not emptied on the designated day as the garbage trucks were not able to get at many of the garbage bins which had been snowed over.

One day it was blowing the snow, so it got quite packed as well. I’m still working on doing peripheral areas so that when it snows the next time it will be slightly easier. Usually we have one very heavy snowfall during the winter, so I’m hoping we have had it now. The worst that happens is that it turns mild, the snow melts but refreezes as ice at night. That is forecast for about 5 days in the future.

I actually enjoy having something to do outside that challenges my muscles and gives me fresh air and exercise. Now that I’m not working and having to get up at 5 am to clear the driveway to go to work, I find that removing snow by hand shovel very enjoyable. I wait until it’s daylight and quit when it gets dark. We don’t have to take the car out every day, so we plan trips out for shopping or being social with the weather forecast in mind.

Not every winter is filled with as much snow. Sometimes snow comes as early as October and sometimes it comes and goes as some days are milder. We often get a heavy snowfall in March, just when I’m wanting spring to arrive. Usually the ground freezes in November at the latest and then melting snow will often become ice. Ice I don’t like. As we get older, ice, especially under a thin film of snow, can cause even the most cautious walker to slide and injure themselves.

Skarnsund Bridge taken from near our house, 2 January 2016. There has been snow and frost but the day the picture was taken, there was no real amount of snow on the ground.

We have now lived in our house for almost 36 years, moving in on the 1st of March in 1989, a short time before our daughter was born. During all these years, there have been winter storms, hurricanes and heavy rain, but never any major damage to our house or lot.

Terrace at Fjellheim, picture taken on Sunday 5 January 2025 at 9:19. It is promising to be a sunny day and light long before sunrise. The snow has piled up a lot on the terrace but at least it has stopped snowing.

Usually I like to get the driveway cleared first, so that we can get out with the car, so on the 5th of January I was working on that. I found a large branch that had broken off a pine tree. I called Brock to help cut the branch into smaller pieces so it was easier to move. Sawing the branch indicated that the wood was quite dry which is probably why it broke under the weight of the snow.

A broken branch from a pine tree, Sunday 5 January 2025. The picture was taken at 11:19. There was no damage to the fence.

We work for at most 30 minutes at a time and go inside for warm-up breaks regularly. Fingers get cold fastest. The rest of me keeps quite warm with the layers of clothing that I use and I have warm boots. But fingers, even with two layers of gloves, can get quite cold when it is -10 degrees Celsius and the shovel one is holding is also cold. There’s usually no hurry to get the work done, though I want to make as good use of the daylight hours as possible.

Suddenly, Brock came to me and told me something had happened. I hadn’t heard anything as my hearing disability makes me unaware of even some danger sounds. I walked part way up the driveway and saw the damage to the railing.

Damage to the railing on our terrace, 5 January 2025. Picture taken at 13:16.

That changed on Sunday, the 5th of January 2025 when heavy packed snow on the roof of our house slid off and damaged the glass railing we have on our terrace. There were no person injuries, and material damage can be repaired. I’ve been reflecting on this damage since and realize that since we have lived in the house for so long, it is not surprising that something like this happened. An analysis of the situation made me think that the packed, blown snow last Friday was probably the major reason for suddenly getting damage. Usually the snow just slides off the roof, missing the railing and piling up on the terrace. We remove it once or twice during the winter so it doesn’t get too heavy. This time there was too much blown snow on the terrace already, so the snow from the roof had nowhere to go.

As you can see from the picture, there is a lot of snow on the ground, one section of glass has been shattered and seven sections have been pushed over by the weight of the snow. Our first challenge is to remove the broken sections, some of which may be reusable. But replacing the railing will be a job for the summer months. Brock has already started getting things supported so there isn’t more damage. Working in freezing temperatures does not make loosening bolts easy.

Damage to the railing as seen from the terrace. Usually the snow from the roof just fills up this section of terrace and we remove it when we have time.

As you can see from the picture, there is already a fair bit of snow on the terrace, before more came down from the roof. We normally remove at least some of the snow from the terrace. In some places on the terrace, where it is more open and the wind was blowing the snow, there is about 40 cm of snow.

Winter always gives us different challenges. No two winters are alike, but here in Norway there is always winter and many people get surprised by the first snowfall. Weather forecasting is much better now so that we get warnings of heavy snow so everyone can prepare themselves, and perhaps plan to have a day at home instead of going to work, to school or to go shopping. I like the change of seasons, no matter which season is coming next. I look forward to having snow on the ground to brighten up the long dark evenings. We add extra lights along our terrace and inside our living room to make things a bit brighter. Before you know it, winter retreats. The snow always disappears and spring is around the corner with longer, lighter and warmer days. I’m going to enjoy winter while it is here.