Weather – Page 2 – Patricia McLellan's Blog

2021-12-24

Book: There’s No Such Thing As Bad Weather (Touchstone, 2017)

My daughter came across this book and I decided to read it. I enjoyed it so much that I want to share some of my ideas after reflecting about the book.

The book was written by a Swedish woman who lives in the United States and has two children. Having grown up in a village in Sweden and surrounded by people who enjoyed being outdoors, she was disappointed that where she was living in Indiana, children had little chance to play outdoors. She took her kids to live in Sweden for six months and wrote about many of the differences between the two countries as relates to bringing up children.

The book is primarily for parents and gives tips on how to raise children in a Scandinavian fashion. Here she includes information from Norway, Denmark and Finland as well as Sweden. I could relate to much of the information that she had gathered about the advantages for children spending at least some time outdoors, every day, no matter the weather.

At the moment of writing this, it is a dark December day in Norway. There are only a few hours of daylight every day, and though I try to go outside most days, some days it is just not appealing to be outdoors. But while reading this book in December it made me think about the importance of being outdoors, not only for children, but for adults.

Summary of the book by Linda Åkeson McGurk

Introduction: A Swedish Mother in Rural Indiana
Chapter 1: A Right to Nature
Chapter 2: Fresh Air is Good for You
Chapter 3: Just Let Them Play
Chapter 4: We Must All Take Care of Nature
Chapter 5: A Little Dirt Won’t Hurt
Chapter 6: Freedom with Responsibility
Chapter 7: Outside, There is a Better Connection
Chapter 8: It Takes a Village

The author starts by explaining the American trend (based on her experiences in Indiana) that parents are concerned that if their children aren’t reading by the age of four, that they will not get anywhere in life. To my mind as a parent, that is not understanding the stages of development that children go through. It is common in Scandinavia that children start school at six or seven years of age (both my children started at seven and they both have master’s degrees ) and they might go to a kindergarten or preschool before that. Both my children started at kindergarten (barnehage) at the age of three.

The author refers to several other authors who have written about different aspects of children and parenting (see the list below) and has found the facts which I will be making references to here. You will need to read the book to get things exactly right. The author is concerned that children need to get “fresh” air every single day. Of course, not all people are lucky enough to live where the outdoor air is actually good for you. But by going to parks and other areas of nature, you can get fresh air into your lungs.

Children do not need to have activities constantly organized for them. One of the things children need to learn is how to organize their time, how to be bored, how to take suitable risks, how to socialize with others. In addition, they need time with adults who actually talk to them, as that is how they build up their vocabulary. Curiosity about the world around us leads children to learn how things work, either through their own investigations or by asking adults appropriate questions.

The author is also concerned that if the next generation is going to learn to take care of nature, they need to come in contact with it and learn to love it. Looking at trees only on a screen does not give the same learning or loving attitude as a walk in a park with tall trees. Children like to investigate things and usually get dirty doing it. Research has been done that indicates that we are too clean now, and we don’t get some of the good bacteria that we need to live a healthy life. Playing in the dirt or sandbox is not a health problem.

Small children need quite a bit of supervision when they are outside. They need to be protected from dangerous situations, for example a car whizzing by on the road, but they also need to learn to take responsibility for themselves, for example, learning to cross roads at crosswalks. As children grow older, the borderlines of where they are allowed to be on their own should expand as they are able to handle longer distances from the house on their own.

It has been shown in many research projects, that being outside in nature is good for mental health, not only in children but in adults.

A Scandinavian Mother’s “Get Up and Go Outside” Manifesto includes the following points (mostly directly quoted from pages 209-211):

1 There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes. Whatever the weather, children must be dressed appropriately, whether it is sunshine and warm, rainy and wet, or snow and cold. Learning to dress yourself and your children appropriate to the weather is important for the parent to learn. Make sure footwear is appropriate too. There are, of course, certain types of weather which do not suit outdoor play, such as thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, or flash floods.

2 Fresh air is actually good for you. It reduces the risk for common infections, near-sightedness, vitamin D deficiency, and obesity. It will also lessen the symptoms of ADHD, anxiety and depression.

3 Unstructured outdoor play has everything kids need for healthy physical, social, and cognitive development in the early years. Older kids need time to play too.

4 Our modern indoor lifestyle has made kids too clean and likely triggered an epidemic of immunological disorders. To bring some beneficial germs back into your child’s life, ditch that hand sanitizer and let him sink his hands deep down in dirt.

5 Kids need risky play to learn how to assess risk and prepare for adulthood. Activities can include climbing trees, sliding on frozen puddles, using real tools and walking to the park without an adult.

6 If we want our kids to keep a foot in the natural world, we need to pry them away from their screens sometimes, and do things outdoors as a family. The adults must leave their screens behind too.

7 Find some like-minded people and figure out how you can get kids back outside in your community. Working with others makes it easier.

8 Children and nature make a really good fit. By immersing kids in the natural world early, we’re increasing the chances of them wanting to take care of it later in life.

References to Other Books

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv. Algonquin Books, 2008.
Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children, by Angela Hansom. New Harbinger, 2016
Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting, by Carl Honoré. HarperOne, 2009
Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education, by David Sobel. Orion Society, 1999.
Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child from an Oversanitized World, by B. Brett Finlay and Marie-Claire Arrieta. Algonquin Books, 2016.
Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without going Nuts with Worry), by Lenore Skenazy. Jossey-Bass, 2010
Unplugged: 15 Steps to Disconnect from Technology and Reconnect with Nature, Yourself, Friends, and Family, by Jason Runkel Sperling. Kindle Edition, 2016.
Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life, by Richard Louv. Algonquin Books, 2016

Personal Thoughts on Being Outdoors

We all have our personal experiences from childhood which will depend a lot on where you actually grew up and how your parents were with you. I was fortunate to grow up in the 1950s and 60s in an urban area where everyone owned their own house and there was a yard at the front of the house, and a yard at the back of the house. Most houses with children would have had at least some grass to play on though we also had vegetables and fruit in our garden at the back. The back yards were usually fenced, so separate from the neighbours and the front yards were usually unfenced. There were a lot of houses with children my age so I had people within easy reach to play with. Particularly in chapter 8, Linda McGurk takes up the situation that for children to play outdoors a lot, it has to be what everyone else is doing too.

The message I remember hearing was “Go out and play”. I was expected to be outside the house and either play by myself or find someone else to play with. If the weather wasn’t that great, I could use blankets under a roof and make myself and my dolls a nice place to play house. When the weather was good, I might play with one of my girl friends out in the sunshine. But I also remember sitting on a blanket in the shade (and having to move as the shade moved) playing with my dolls. I remember climbing trees, using roller skates on the side walk, playing Annie Oakley, riding a tricycle and pulling a wagon, or playing hopscotch marked out on the side walk, all usually with one or more friends.

Elementary school was a five-minute walk from the house and I went home for lunch almost every day, giving me time to stretch my legs as well as get a warm meal in the winter months. The school had a very large outdoor area, with various types of areas to play in, including several areas with a lot of trees, some of which we could climb up a few branches. There were playing fields as well as paved areas for skipping rope and playing hopscotch. The children spread out over the large area giving those who had a need to run around lots of opportunity to do that. Occasionally the weather was so bad (usually heavy rain), that we had to play indoors during recess, in very noisy basement areas that nobody really enjoyed. I think having a long lunch hour and a recess with outdoor play helped us to sit still when we were in the classroom.

My children were primarily brought up in a rural environment, living in a single family dwelling with farm fields beside us and no playmates within easy walking distance. When they were young, I spent time outdoors with them and they were given more freedom to be outside on their own as they grew older. They were both fortunate to have their early years before computers were very common and long before hand-held devices were available. The limits of physical freedom were defined by the size of our lot, which eventually expanded as they were encouraged to walk to a friend’s home or to cycle somewhere on their own. Unfortunately we parents were also obliged to drive them a lot. However, they would be encouraged to play outside even when visiting friends.

Both of my children attended kindergarten from when they were three years old until they began school at the age of seven. Kindergartens in Norway still have several hours of outdoor play, usually in a fenced-in area around the main building. Here they can dig in a sandbox, play on swings, ride tricycles, or make up their own games. They learn to socialize with others their own age. They learn to follow the rules set by the staff. For my children as well, the kindergarten was where they learned Norwegian as we used English at home.

Once my children started school, the elementary school was five kilometers away and they got a bus to school. Catching the school bus was part of the regular routine of learning responsibility for one’s own activities. Even at elementary school, there was always recess with outdoor play, no matter the weather. The children were expected to wear appropriate clothing to school to be outside both during recess and lunch hour. Sometimes adults would organize activities, but mostly they were outside to prevent bad behaviour and to mediate disputes between the children.

As an adult, I like to spend time outdoors. I can get discouraged if the weather does not look good from inside. I don’t like being outside in the dark, which makes limitations on when I can be out in the winter months. We live in a part of Norway where it seldom rains non-stop for hours at a time. It is more likely to be showers on and off all day, so it is easier to get outside while it isn’t raining and even stay outside with whatever I’m working on even if another shower comes along. In the winter, I like shovelling snow off the driveway as it gives me both fresh air and exercise as well as being useful. In the summer, I have a large garden to work with, though it can be discouraging to work when it is pouring with rain, which it often does in the summer. Not all summers here are warm and dry. But that just means that one has to learn how to dress suitably for the weather.

I have always found that going for walks is a good remedy for a bad mood. It gives me time to think through problems. If I am walking through the woods, I have to concentrate on where to put my feet and problems seem to melt away. I have also heard that having trees visible from the windows in your house is good for mental health.

The municipality that I live in has had a summer program called InderøyTurer (Inderøy Walks) where trails are marked in the wild areas. There are usually about 30 different walks and one gets points based on how long the walk is and how difficult a trail it is. There are always some easy walks for those in wheelchairs, so that handicapped people are encouraged to get outside too. I read just recently in the local newspaper that this summer there was a record number of visits to these posts. We use an app on our smartphones and are able to check in using our phones. This is an encouragement to get people out of their houses and take their children with them.

I would like to encourage everyone to spend time outdoors, preferably in nature or near trees, every day. Whether you spend half an hour or several hours, being outdoors will give you fresh air, exercise and time away from the screens in your life. Enjoy!

2021-12-19

A December Walk

Going for walks in December can be difficult for me. I actually don’t mind being out in the rain or the snow, but I dislike the wind. The problem is getting out of the house. Once I am outside with the appropriate clothes on, I enjoy being out in nature and the temperature is not very important.

The other challenge with getting out for walks in December is the short window for daylight in which to go for walks out in nature, away from houses and lighting. For example, today, the 19th of December, two days before the winter solstice, sunrise was at 10.03 and sunset was at 14.22. When it is cloudy, it doesn’t seem very bright outside at sunrise or sunset. When looking outside from a brightly lit house, it seems darker than it actually is, once you are outside.

Weather-wise, December this year has been very varied. At the beginning of the month, we had quite cold temperatures, down to -12 degrees Celsius. We had snow on the ground and sunshine during the few hours of daylight. Then about the 13th of the month, it warmed up to +8 degrees Celsius and started to rain a lot. The snow disappeared. The ground is soggy. Paths in the woods are small streams or large puddles.

Today I went for about an hour’s walk starting at 11:30. I took a walk that goes both on dirt roads, paved roads and forest trail. I put on rain trousers and rain jacket. Toque and mitts were also put on. I wore winter walking boots that kept my feet dry in spite of the soggy ground. I enjoyed myself as it is quite a while since I have been out for a walk in the woods.

My goal was to get to Bjønnbråtte, which is on a cliff top. First I follow some gravel roads which are very easy walking. As I climbed up the hill, it was noticeable that it had been trying to snow, rather than rain, as I got higher up. There wasn’t much, but the temperature must have been close to freezing point and I had to be careful that I didn’t slip.

Once I got into the woods, the trail was not only damp, but the stream was following it and there were large puddles to pick my way around. The walk to Bjønnbråtte is about 20 minutes from home.

Picture taken at 11:52, from Bjønnbråtte, looking towards Ytterøy. This is the end point of one of my favourite walks. This point is on a cliff that goes straight down to the water.

Today I decided to walk home via Sysvedalen and Vangshylla. At the bottom of Sysvedalen is a very small beach, used mostly for pulling small boats up on land to be stored there when not in use. It is a pebble beach, not sand. What attracted my attention today was the amount of seaweed that had been washed up on the beach. It has been quite stormy lately and today I was there at about high tide. Looking up the data about high tide, it was highest, at 307 cm, at about 11:50 which is quite a high tide for us. It was a full moon last night, which gives us quite high tides.

Looking south-west from the beach at Rotvollvika. Picture taken at 12:05, shortly after high tide. In the background is Ytterøy.

Looking south-east from the same beach at Rotvollvika. This picture was also taken at 12:05.

Taken from the road down to Vangshylla at 12:15. It was raining at the time and I was fascinated by the light in the sky.

Taken from the road to Vangshylla at 12:15. Note the light in the sky and the ramps to the boats in the small boat harbour. It is high tide and you don’t have to walk very much downhill to get to the boats.

As I continued on uphill, the sky to the north had the most light. This was caused by a break in the clouds though it was still raining where I was. The picture was taken at 12:21.

Once I was home again, I was glad that I had gone outside. I often wonder why I don’t get out more, as I really enjoy myself, even if it is raining. The weather forecast is for snow again, perhaps even tonight. I’ll just have to see what it is like tomorrow and make an effort to get outside again.

I hope you, my readers, are getting out for fresh air and exercise regularly. Don’t put it off, no matter the weather. Just find a terrain that suits you, dress for the weather and away you go. Remember the Scandinavian expression: “There is no such thing as bad weather”, but you do have to dress appropriately for the weather that you have.

2021-10-05

Fall Colours

A while ago my daughter asked me if the trees here were starting to change colour yet and though the answer at the time (about the middle of September) was “no”, this blog is an answer to her question. The pictures were taken on the 1st of October, 2021, either on our own lot or on my walk up to a local dairy to buy milk.

I love the different seasons we have where we live. There are four distinct seasons and each has its own characteristics. Fall, or autumn, is when the nights get cooler, some of the trees loose their leaves and most flowers have gone to seed. Where we live there are often storms with a lot of wind and rain. There is also less and less daylight each day until we get to the winter solstice. Geese are flying south and other migratory birds disappear for a few months.

Some bushes have a lot of colour to them. The leaves on these ones turn red and there are black berries. I think this bush is *aronia*, or black chokeberry.

Meteoriologists in Norway have their own definition of fall: “Når døgnmiddeltemperaturen er mellom 0 og 10 grader og temperaturtendensen er fallende gjennom perioden, da er det høst, sier klimaforsker Stein Kristiansen ved Meteorologisk institutt.” (source) – “When the average daily temperature is between 0 and 10 degrees Celsius, and the temperatures are generally falling, then it is fall/autumn, says climate researcher Stein Kristiansen from The Norwegian Meteorological Institute (website).

This year we have not been below 4 degrees Celsius at night and daytime temperatures have been between 10 and 15 degrees Celsius. I think the amount of daylight affects trees too. Many smaller plants die off once their seeds have been made. If we have a very dry summer, I notice that the birch trees will lose leaves even in July or August to save water.

Some of the fields are still green, but where the grains have been harvested the field is now a yellowish brown. Our woods are a combination of deciduous trees (which lose their leaves) and coniferous trees (which retain needles all winter, though they also shed some of their needles at this time of year). Also notice the red stick at the side of the road. It serves a dual purpose: first to tell drivers at night where the edge of the road is and second, to tell those who plough the snow in the winter where the edge of the road is.

These bushes lay close to the ground, but the house owner has chosen four types of bushes that each give a different colour to the slope at this time of year.

Trees that stand alone, like this birch tree, can often have more vivid colours.

Grasses that are not cut, turn yellow as the seeds mature. The green fields are grass fields that are cut to provide fodder for cows and they will stay green all winter, or until ploughed.

However, I was also surprised to see some flowers still blooming.

A dandelion was having a second blooming.

Red clover was still blooming along the side of the road.

*Achillea millefolium*. This is very common here, especially along roads. It is called common yarrow in English and *ryllik* in Norwegian.

In my own garden, plants are also turning various colours as their lifetimes are over. The ones you see here are all perennials and most of them will come up from the roots next spring.

Last of all, we think of the fall season as the time of year that the leaves fall off the trees. In this area of our yard, the trees have already gotten a good start at getting rid of their leaves and giving the gardener something to do.

We are only at the beginning of fall now. The next two months will show even more changes in nature around us, as the days grow shorter and the temperature drops. More trees will change colour. More leaves will fall, as not all trees lose their leaves at the same time. While the days are still nice, I will continue to enjoy walks several times a week.

2021-04-252021-04-25

Signs of Spring

With a large dump of snow in April, I have been thinking about what are the signs that spring has actually arrived. First of all, I think that the disappearance of the snow is an important sign.

Let’s look at what the definition of spring is for Norway. This excerpt is taken from the Store Norske Leksicon: Vår er er årstiden mellom vinter og sommer, og den perioden av året hvor normal døgnmiddeltemperatur er mellom 0ºC og 10ºC (disse inkludert). Temperaturen stiger gjerne i denne perioden and quoted on www.met.no. Translation: Spring is the season between winter and summer and that part of the year when the normal average day temperature is between 0 degrees C and 10 degrees C, including these temperatures. The temperature is usually rising during this period. Calculation of the average day temperature will differ depending on the number of readings taken during the day. The simplest calculation is the highest temperature is added to the lowest temperature and then divided by two (for example, 10 + 0 = 10, 10/2 = 5)

Another common definition of spring is the time between the spring equinox in March and the summer solstice in June, but this is a bit too general for my way of thinking. I prefer the previous definition which is tied to temperature.

If I look at some weather statistics for areas near here, but measured near sea level, there are very few days in March when the average day temperature is below zero degrees Celsius. By the end of April there should be none. This does not mean that there will not be freezing temperatures at night, but that the temperature rises sufficiently during the day that the average temperature is well above zero.

Spring is often thought of as that time of the year when the first flowers come out.

Colt’s foot (Tussilago farfara) is one of the first wild flowers to come out in Norway. It grows along the edges of roads, especially where the snow melts quickly and the sun warms up the earth. Its leaves come out after the flowers are finished.

Another early bloom is the anemone Hepatica nobilis, a member of the buttercup family. The leaves are green all year round.

Crocuses are planted and this one is almost finished. Many of the early garden flowers come from bulbs.

I live in an agricultural area so another sign of spring is the outdoor work of the farmers. They also give us some less pleasant smells as they spread their animal manure on the fields.

Tractors in the fields and on the roads become more common. Note that some of the fields are becoming very green as the grass starts growing again in the warmth and sunshine.

This field has been ploughed. Many of the fields near us are used to grow grass for animal feed, or for letting the animals graze in the summer months. They will not be reseeded every year, but dandelions can be a persistent weed so fields will be ploughed up and reseeded on a regular basis.

On today’s walk up to get eggs at a neighboring farm, I saw this hose just laying on the field. It is used to spread manure on the fields.

Here is the attachment that the tractor pulls across the fields making sure that the manure goes primarily into the ground. When we first moved here, the manure was sprayed into the air to spread it. What a stink! With this newer method, there is much less smell, but there is still some.

There is the large container for the manure and the pump to get it into the long hoses that are dragged across the fields.

More pleasant signs of spring include the return of birds. We have several species of seagulls that live near us. Some of them are here all winter long, but the noisiest one, Larus canus, loves to follow the tractors around as they plough the fields. They like to soar on the wind and often fly in large groups. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures to include about this species.

Another common sign of spring is the oyster catcher who likes to feed in the shallows at low tide.

Pussy willows on the ground are a good indication that the willow tree has started its spring routine.

Here is the willow tree itself. It hasn’t lost all of its flowers yet. It is a sign that there will be pollen in the air for the next couple of months. The leaves will come out after the blossoms are finished.

I would like to finish off this blog with a few pictures of plants in my garden. I enjoy going out to see what has started blooming and what has started sprouting .

This columbine is just starting to put out its leaves. The flowers will come out much later.

Sedum acre is already blooming and the daffodils won’t be long now. They just need a day or two of sunshine. The one tulip that has come up may not bloom. They are often eaten by the deer that like my garden.

I’m not sure what this one is called, but it is an early bloomer too. It comes up under the rose bush where I put out bird feeders in the winter time. I put out mostly sunflower seeds and you can see the empty seed shells fertilizing the ground.

You may have other signs of spring in your area, but these were the things that I thought of while going on my walk today.

2020-12-21

Winter Solstice 2020 in Inderøy

The winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere is the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. One should more accurately call this the December Solstice as there is also a solstice in June, which in the Northern Hemisphere indicates the longest day of the year, i.e. the day with the most daylight hours. The December solstice is a particular time on a particular day, when the sun is exactly over the Tropic of Capricorn. In 2020 this happens on the 21st of December at 10:02 UTC, or at 11:02 local time where I live.

The sun was just clearing the hills in the distance at 11:02 local time. The picture was taken from sea level, at the high water mark on the beach. Note how orangey the colour are just after sunrise when the sun is still very, very low in the sky.

For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, this is the shortest day of the year, i.e. the day with the least amount of daylight.

Because of latitude and the way we keep time, the latest sunrise and the earliest sunset will not occur on exactly the solstice. The earliest sunset will occur before the winter solstice and the latest sunrise will occur after the winter solstice. (See explanation h ere)

How much of a coincidence is it that Christians celebrate the birth of Christ (Christmas) a few days after the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere? Here in Norway, Christmas becomes a festival of lights as the number of daylight hours is at a minimum and people like light.

So let’s look at some of the numbers for my location in Vangshylla, Inderøy, Norway

Date	Sunrise	Sunset	Hours of daylight	Solar Noon
Dec 18	10:03	14:21	4 hours, 18 minutes, 37 seconds	12:12
Dec 19	10:03	14:21	4:17:56	12:12
Dec 20	10:04	14:22	4:17:31	12:13
Dec 21	10:05	14:22	4:17:24	12:13
Dec 22	10:05	14:23	4:17.33	12:14
Dec 23	10:05	14:23	4:17:59	12:14
Dec 24	10:06	14:24	4:18:43	12:15

Notice that I have given the sunrise and sunset to the nearest minute, but one actually needs to include the seconds to show the exact number of minutes of daylight and to see the changes from day to day. There isn’t much difference between Dec 19 and Dec 21, only 32 seconds .

The latest sunrise is on December 24th and 25th at 10:06. The earliest sunset in on December 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th and 14:21. There are very small changes each day around the solstice. However, with exact astronomical calculations, the day with the shortest number of daylight hours is December 21st with 4 hours, 17 minutes and 24 seconds.

I have also included in the table when the solar noon is, that is, when the sun is at its highest position in the sky. This varies slightly from day to day, because the day is not really 24 hours long. Around the December solstice, solar noons are a little bit farther apart each day.

This photo was taken at 12:13, showing its highest position in the sky on the December solstice. Note how there is less orange in the photo and more blue, partly because the sun is higher in the sky, but also it is partly covered by cloud.

My source for information is: https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/ten-things-december-solstice.html. By going to Sun & Moon, you can write in your location and get the relevant times.

Today I found another spring flower blooming, spring phlox. In my garden, this plant is often eaten by deer in the winter, so it often blooms later than it should. This year it is still growing well, even in December and has put out two flower buds. Is it hoping to bloom before the deer come to eat?

2020-12-06

Inderøy Walk – Winter Sunshine

Today’s walk took about 2 hours and one of my goals was to get some sunshine. In December, sunshine is a precious commodity and though our house gets some in the afternoon, the days are short. By heading outside, I was hoping to get fresh air, exercise and some sunshine on my face. All goals were achieved and as I walked, I thought about how important light is in December.

The first photo was taken at 11:40 and the last one at 13:17. Today, the 6th of December, sunrise was at 9:42 and sunset at 14:30.

This picture was taken at 11:43 from Skarnsund Bridge. At this point the clouds are obscuring the sun so that I’m not actually in the sunshine. Note how low the sun is in the sky and though it was moving from east to west, it didn’t get any higher in the sky. Sunshine in December gives very yellow and orange tones to what it shines on, whether it is cloud or nature.

The mountains to the north of us are now covered in snow and the sun shining on them made me think about how location is so important to how much sunshine a place gets, though cloud cover also plays a role.

In Norway, it is interesting to see how the coastline has been settled. The north side of a fjord will get more sunshine than the south side and therefore will have more farms and villages. As you look at the picture above, the peninsula sticking out into the water gets a lot less sunshine than the mountain tops in the background at this time of year. Height above sea level will also affect how much sunshine a place gets, especially in winter. Getting higher up, there will be less land between the sun and where you are. As I crossed Skarnsund Bridge and climbed up a side road on the other side, it was noticeable that houses higher up got more sunshine than those lower down.

Walking today had its challenges. A few days ago, it rained on frozen ground and since then, there has been a thin layer of ice on road surfaces that are not often driven on. The side of the road can be even icier, so I had to be careful where I walked. This side road was sanded and doesn’t have much traffic, so I was able to walk in the middle of the road where it was sanded and had no problems walking, either up the hill or down again.

There was a lot less ice on the road as I climbed up the hill, especially where the road was mostly under the trees. With much less ice, the walking was easier.

This farm is getting a dose of sunshine. An open field between the house, farm buildings and the direction of the sun, allows the buildings to get some sunshine when the sun is not obscured by clouds.

This solitary birch tree was bathed in sunshine.

Yes, I got a dose of sunshine too, as my shadow proves.

I notice how the sunshine changes the colours of the things around us. Without sunshine, December tends to be a month of grey and white, with just a few dabs of blue and green. But when the sun shines on something, the colours turn more vibrant. Coniferous trees become very green and the sky was very blue where there weren’t any clouds. The brown grass and trees without leaves turn yellow and orange.

The coniferous trees are still green, but the deciduous trees show up as very yellow now that they have lost their leaves. The forest where I am walking is a mixture of both coniferous and deciduous trees.

Finally, I came to the pathway I was aiming for. This path, though labelled with a red man, meaning that it was a difficult path, was much easier walking than on the roadway. Under the trees there was almost no ice or frost.

I love this sort of a walk, into the forest and along a well-trodden pathway. At this time of year, it is quite quiet. I didn’t meet anyone else. Car traffic cannot be heard. There were no birds twittering in the trees. But patches of sunshine filtered through the trees.

In an open patch along the trail, the puddle in the swampy part of the path has frozen. There was ice in only one small section of the pathway.

The goal of my walk has been reached, Furufjellet (Pine Mountain), which was reflecting the sunshine as I had suspected it would.

I turned around and started walking home again and now Vangshylla was bathed in sunshine.

Skarnsund Bridge was also being bathed in sunlight. The concrete towers and the wires glowed in the sunshine.

The wires of the bridge are painted red, so they showed up very well against the blue sky.

Home again, and still an hour until sunset.

2020-11-11

Inderøy Walk – Fog and Øyna

Wednesday is my usual day to go for a walk with a girlfriend. The weather forecast was for sunshine so I was looking forward to today’s walk. As I went out to the car, I noticed fog rolling across the water, coming out of Skarnsund. As I stood watching for a few minutes, the fog rapidly moved out over Trondheim Fjord.

Picture taken at 9:38 looking towards Skarnsund Bridge.

I had agreed to meet my friend at her house in Straumen and I was anxious to see where there was fog and where there wasn’t fog. As I had hoped, the fog was mostly on the water and if we walked uphill, we would be in the sunshine.

We choose to walk up to Øyna, a hotel and restaurant located near the top of a hill in Straumen. (See their website for more information about them. You can also get information about them in English here.)

Øyna, a commercial enterprise having hotel accommodation and a restaurant serving locally produced food. It lies at the top of a hill and lies low in the terrain.

The newest hotel units also lie low in the landscape but each room has a beautiful view over Straumen, Trondheim Fjord and the surrounding area.

Even on a foggy day, the views from here were good though, of course, not as good as on a sunny day. In the picture below you can just see the top of the spire of Sakshaug Church, sticking up from the fog. This picture is taken looking between two of the new units of the hotel, so this is the sort of view there would be from the hotel rooms themselves.

Looking down the hill from Øyna towards Straumen, most of which is hidden in the fog. In the background are the hills of Levanger.

Looking westwards towards Trondheim. We are now high enough above the fog to get an interesting picture of how the fog covers the fjord. Where you see white, it should be mostly fjord underneath the fog.

I always find it interesting how patchy fog can be, especially when looking at it from above. Here I am looking eastwards towards two of the housing areas of Straumen. Not everybody has sunshine.

Back home and this picture was taken at 12:00. There is more fog on Skarnsund, but it is still lying low over the water.

The fog is wispy over the water, but not rising particularly high above the water, so I am still in the sunshine.

Looking towards Ytterøy with the small boat harbour at Vangshylla in the center. The sun is low in the sky, even at noon.

I had a most enjoyable walk, including a good climb up the hill in Straumen, an exploration of an area I hadn’t seen for several years, and lots of sunshine. We used about 75 minutes on our walk today.

2020-05-16

Depressing weather

There’s not much we can do about the weather, except adapt to it. But certain types of weather are more depressing than others. I’m glad I don’t live in an area with a lot of drought or a place that has large forest fires. However, rain day after day can be hard on the spirits.

For example, here’s a picture from 8:30 am on Friday, May 15th, 2020.

The snow kept on falling, on and off all day, though by evening most of it had melted. It’s hard to see in this picture, but the rowan tree is opening out its leaves, as it should at the beginning of May.

It is quite normal for it to snow where we live in April, but it usually melts quickly and disappears. April is the time for the early flowers to bloom, such as daffodils. May is when I have always thought that my garden looks at its best, with lots of daffodils and tulips blooming.

I went back to my pictures from May 2019 and found the following.

April and May are the months I usually spend a lot of time in the garden, cleaning up after the winter, enjoying slightly warmer days and sunshine, weeding methodically through all the flower beds. I got a good start in April this year, getting the weeding done in many of the beds, but suddenly during the last two weeks, it has been difficult to motivate myself to continue. Snow on the ground when I wake up, cold biting wind on the driveway, snow flurries or rain showers throughout the day, do not encourage me to go outside for several hours.

We usually get two weeks of nice, warm weather in May. I’m waiting!

2020-05-14

Inderøy Walk – Tittinghalla

On Wednesday, the 13th of May, my friend and I decided to take the walk up to the highest hill near where I live. I live at approximately 20 meters above sea level and the hilltop is 268 meters above sea level, so for me the walk includes an increase of over 240 meters in elevation. Some of the ascents are quite steep.

It was a cool morning and there had been a dusting of snow on the ground when I got up. However, the precipitation had been coming as relatively short snow flurries the last couple of days, so we decided to do the walk anyway. Wednesday is our regular day for walking together.

As an Inderøy Walk most people would park much farther up the hill than my friend did and therefore have less hill to climb. However she decided to park on a lay-by at the corner of the road down to Vangshylla.

I have been doing this walk for 30 years and it doesn’t really get any easier over the years. One memory is the year that my husband and I were going to take a planned hike in the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, Canada to see the Burgess Shale, an all-day hike, and we took the hike up Tittinghalla as often as we could to give ourselves the practice of climbing a mountain.

The geological definition of a mountain is a landform that rises at least 300 meters from the surrounding terrain. Tittinghalla doesn’t reach up over 300 meters above sea level, but if you include the depth of Skarnsund, which can be over 100 meters deep, Tittinghalla would classify as a mountain. There is also a definite point where one cannot go higher, though it is covered in trees and therefore not so easy to get a good view of the surrounding landscape.

So, back to Wednesday, and our walk. I met my friend on the 755 road at the turnoff to Vangshylla and we climbed up Tittinghalla from there. We started at about 10 am. The picture below shows the trail after the first snow flurry has passed us. We took refuge under some trees during the worst of the snow flurry. It was good to have a rest from the relatively steep climb. It’s actually quite a bit steeper than it actually looks in the photo.

Climbing up Tittinghalla in Inderøy. Picture taken at 10:27 on 13 May 2020.

This part of the trail has been a tractor road for taking out lumber from the forest. There are deep ruts from the continued use of a tractor, and the climb can be quite steep in parts.

By the time we got to the summit of Tittinghalla, the sun was shining again.

Time: 10:42, so a little more than a half hour’s walk from the 755 road. Note that the sun is shining now.

There isn’t very much view from the top as the trees grow quite tightly. It would have been nice if five or six trees had been taken out to give a bit of a view.

I always make a circle tour around the top of Tittinghalla and it is much more open on the north side of the hill. Here looking toward the hills in Verran which still have snow on the tops.

Going downhill at 11:00, the snow is quickly disappearing in the sunshine and we can see Skarnsund Bridge and Mosvik in the background.

We used about one and a half hours from my friend’s car until we were back to her car. I still had another 10 minutes walk home. We were away from car traffic for most of the walk and even though we were talking most of the time, there is only the sounds of the birds when out in nature on a walk like this. You need to be in relatively good shape to take this climb, but I always enjoy the walk through the woods. Take pauses as you need to on the steep bits.

2020-02-13

Low water at Vangshylla

The fjords of Norway are tidal water. The tides go in and out twice a day with approximately six to six and a half hours between each turning point. For example, the calculations for Vangshylla in Norway for the 13th of February 2020 are high tide at 2:23 and 14:38 and low tide at 8:21 and 21:04. Tomorrow the tides will be 45-50 minutes later.

Most of my life has been lived in cities on tidal water, except for a few years as a young adult in my 20s when I lived in cities on a river. The daily flow of water in tidal areas creates challenges for life in the seawater, but also brings in nutrients for life in the seabed and washes away “used” water.

For thirty years I drove to work passing over a bridge with a very strong current (“Oh, the tide is going out!”) and two bays that were laid bare when the tide was out. It always feels like the normal way of life. However, people who live on rivers or lakes will have a different seasonal flow to water levels.

Recently there have been very high tides where I live and it has been fascinating to see how high the tide could get. Suddenly I realized that for those who don’t live here, it may be more interesting to know what is hidden by the water when the tide is in. So this morning at approximately sunrise and low tide, at about 8:30 am, I went out to take some photos to show what is actually under all that water that I’ve been fascinated with for the last four days.