I’ve survived another night in the wild, and much more eventful than the previous one too. It was already dark outside around eleven o’clock and I have retreated into the tent leaving mosquitoes and rain outside to read a book under a flashlight. About half an hour passed when someone or something begun scratching tirelessly on the side of the tent. Scratching went on for about a minute and then stopped just to continue several moments later. The itchy-scratchy visit lasted altogether some 10 minutes during which I pretended blithely to be completely immersed and consumed by the book, too busy to even care who or what that might be. But inside of me adrenaline was produced in gushes and my heart was racing. That’s the end of it, I thought, what a miserable way to go. Whether a curious bear or an uninvited trigger happy hillbilly taking a break from shooting his gun, whatever it was it would have to either knock on the door or rip open the tent for me to come out.

Even though bears are shy animals and at least in Finland, as far as I know, the last time a bear killed a human being was so long ago no one even remembers. But for all I know, this peace treaty could be broken over my cadaver. And I already imagined the headlines selling the yellow press the next day: “Stupid camper sets a tent just outside a bear den”, or something similarly scandalous and stupid.

I thought if I ever get out of this alive, I won’t be able to get any shut-eye for the rest of the trip. Just how wrong I was. Next thing I remember was waking up startled only the next morning, trying to figure out where I was. I circled the tent looking for clues or traces of my nightly visitor but found none. I now proudly belonged to mountain men, afraid of no one and nothing. Even though it is a statistical fact (if that’s not an oxymoron) that in Finland it is much more likely to get killed by your ex than a bear. There you have it.

Feeling content, I could concentrate on other more important things such as gathering breakfast. This is probably a single most rewarding thing when being out and about in the wild, getting your own food right from nature’s bosom. And there was plenty all around me. Freshly picked bilberries and just ripened lingonberries went straight into my porridge bowl. It was fantastic and I clung to the moment for as long as I could. Which wasn’t all that long as now besides restless mosquitoes I had deer fly attacking me too.

Deer fly were a complete novelty to me when I arrived to Finland a couple of years ago. Never before in my life have I seen an insect so clumsy as a deer fly. Upon my first encounter with the Lipoptena cervi I begun to think this must be either a very young species, or it managed to trick the ways of survival of the fittest by being incredibly cunning at something. I vividly remember wondering through the forest a couple of years ago and only after returning home I’ve noticed tens of these tiny slimy-like flies firmly attached to my scalp, clinging so hard that it took a lot of time, profanities and patience before I got read of little critters.

The interesting thing is that they really aren’t slimy at all, but have an elastic and glassy body that gives impression of sliminess. Deer fly bodies are so elastic that it is actually quite difficult to even squeeze them between a thumb and a forefinger. And boy, do they know how to irritate. But once I learned that their ending up on humans is really just a big mistake, I started treating them with compassion. Just think about this, L. cervi mistake humans for either deer, elk or any other bovine animal. Not that I’d wanted to be mistaken for a deer by anyone or anything, it’s just that they hardly ever bite humans, drink human blood and deposit their eggs under our skin as they like to do so much on their true host animals. Now that’s what I call devotion, it won’t touch it if it ain’t on its diet and reproduction list. Quite some creatures, I must say. We became instant friends.

After picking all the unlucky deer fly off me (I didn’t want to carry them too far away from their families, after all) and explaining how sorry I was that they will have to try their luck somewhere else, I flung them off just to see their ever clumsy flying.

I was on my way to cycle around lake Pielinen today. Lake Pielinen is the fifth largest lake in Finland (check it out here, it’s that dark splotch in the middle). It covers the area of 868 km², so there’s really no way to pretend you’re cycling around it by accident. It took me much of the three days to complete the task. The circumference of 200 kilometers might sound daunting, but there were aplenty boring villages, tiny hamlets and other amusing sites on the way that kept me entertained like a good album on a long driving trip can.

Just a few hours into the ride I saw a perfect bathing spot right off the road. It was invincible. I simply had to wash away all that dust and sweat from the previous two days somewhere and this place was as good as it gets. I pulled off, took the towel and soap and went for a dip. The whole experience ended up more like a quick shower than a nice bath as water was excruciatingly cold and as far as I could recall even avanto was more akin to steamy bath than this was. Sure enough, after I emerged from the lake I stank no more, but it took me hours to rise my body temperature from 13 back to my preference of 36,5°C.

By looking at the map there are countless town names scattered around the perimeter of lake Pielinen, but when you’re actually out there, half would not elicit even a though of naming, let alone placing that name on a 1:200 000 map. But there they were in all their glory marked on the map, being no more than a handful of abandoned train stations and half-deserted houses on both sides of the road. But there was something special about this place after all.

Never before in my life have I seen so many bus stops as I have during these several hundred kilometers. Most of the time I was cycling on back-country roads, but there they were, faithful like a dog, hundreds and hundreds of them. In Finland for every ten trees by the road one bus stop is erected, or so it seems. Not that many buses drove by during my whole trip, but even just a bus stop sign conveyed a certain amount of feeling that I was closer to civilization than I would have wanted to be. I am sure that they have built such an extensive public transportation network just to convince the locals to stay put in such remote places. Just who would have otherwise wanted to live some place called Talviniemi without being assured that all it takes for them to leave is by hopping on the next bus.

As I cycled along the eastern shore of lake Pielinen between Lieksa and Nurmes, two incredibly dull towns, I thought this is it, I am tired of all these hills. But just as I fell into simplemindedness of propelling the bike up and down all those hills, I spotted an unusual sign by the road. It was Mätäsvaara abandoned molybdenum mine. A narrow boarded path led off the road down a narrow slit in the rocky hill. I propped my bike on the wooden hut by the entrance into that really narrow and steep gorge, left the helmet on my head, took my camera and flashlight, and set off to explore the mine.

Already after few paces into the slit the place became eerily silent and dark. But I wasn’t even entering the mine at all. After reaching the end of the slit a truly impressive rock pit with a pitch black pond in the middle opened up in front of me. Mätävaara’s molybdenum mine was one of the largest in Finland in 1930s and 1940s when it was in its heyday. They’ve dug it several hundreds of meters deep and its tunnels covered some 11 kilometers altogether. I was lucky enough to meet a local visiting the mine at the same time. A strongly built older gentleman explained that as they were digging deeper and deeper, they miners taking everything that wasn’t molybdenum a few kilometers away from the site where piles of debris grew into several hills. But everything that is left of Mätävaara’s mine today is this pond hiding kilometers of dormant dark water-filled tunnels beneath its placid surface.

They say that the pit has peculiar acoustic qualities, so today it is used as a summer outdoor stage for concerts. It would be amazing to hear a concert here, I thought, but I didn’t want to waste much precious time as in meantime I had made my mind that tonight would be the last night I’d sleep out of doors. I was only 170 km or so away from Kuopio. If I wanted to check out another cool thing on the road I would have to prolong the trip for two more days, which would endanger my engagements for the upcoming weekend, namely another fine summer party. The plan immediately sunk in and I was determined to get as close as possible to the town of Nurmes on the northern tip of lake Pielinen, spend another night in the wild and cycle home the following day.

I don’t know if it was just me or was the last day objectively by far the most dull. Hills, hills and more hills. Some smart aleck came up with speculation that origins of word Suomi are to be found in suo, a Finnish word for a swamp. During this last day of cycling it wasn’t difficult to solve the riddle of Suomi. Suo was complemented with mäki, a Finnish word for hill. There are countless swamps in Finland, but there are just as many hills, if not more. It was almost hypnotic, especially when going downhill, and delirious whenever it was time to climb that next hill. I was getting tired of this not just because I would cycle 150 km on the last day, the exhaustion was mental too.

During those four days I’ve cycled some 500 km. It was fantastic. I’d do it in an eye-blink again, I’d just pick a different tour this time.

Mladen

This is the fourth and the last part of the Koli cycling trip series. Here you can find the first, second and third parts.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Cycling, Environment, Finland, Food, Leisure, Travelogue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.