© 2006 Pictures and text Geonord
Hello, my name is Bea, and my mommy and daddy are called Anna and Antti. They insist on running around on two legs. Personally I think it’s much more practical to walk around on all four. That it is more practical with four paws on the ground is clearly demonstrated when we jump around on rocks, and this is very common in my family.
Early one Saturday morning, mommy and daddy woke me up. I knew something special was happening, because they had packed the car the night before. What I couldn’t understand though, was why they insisted on getting up so early. I became soooooo happy when I discovered that it was a huge flock of nice people that was going to travel together with us. And the best thing of all was that my favourite human, Torbjorn, also was going to travel with us.
Sometimes mommy and daddy say that it looks like I like Torbjorn better than them, that’s not correct, but I like Torbjorn a lot. Torbjorn had brought his dog Rambo, whom I also like, and Zorro and Hoppsan. Zorro is also great fun, but Hoppsan seems to be a bit strange.
After a while it as time for a break. New people joined our flock and Torbjorn talked a lot about earthquakes and other stuff that I don’t quite understand. The next stop was more fun. Everybody had lunch and then we went on an adventure. Mommy said that the place is called Mardseleforsen, and Torbjorn took us on a wild chase over a lot of bridges, both suspension and footbridges. He thought he could sneak away from us, but I was in hot pursuit. Unfortunately mommy stopped med from walking as fast as I wanted, so I never really caught up with him, unfortunately.
It was a bit scary to walk over the first bridge. It was such a long way down to the water, and the water was foaming and running really fast, but Torbjorn had walked there so I just had to follow. At the far end of the walk Torbjorn showed us what a kolk looks like. I just saw some small and larger oblong pits in the rock surface, but mommy and daddy thought they were very special.
It was a looooong day in the car and the road went from bad to worse, but finally we arrived at a mine. Daddy says it’s called Blaiken. I was not allowed to go out there, more than a short walk to ease the pressure, but mommy and daddy seemed very happy when we left the place. They talked about pyromorphite and honey-yellow sphalerite. It seemed that they picked some fluorite too. That night we stayed in a camping cabin. The rest of the flock stayed at the hostel. Both the hostel and the cabin was at the camping in Sorsele, but as the man in the reception didn’t want to let me stay in the hostel, mom and dad had to rent a cabin.
I’ve stayed in a camping cabin once before. I was just a pup then and thought it was scary because it smelled of so many different people. This time I was more prepared, and as long as I had my own bed, or even better - mommy’s sleeping bag, I was okay. My favourite sleeping place during this trip soon became inside mommy’s sleeping bag, preferably as close to the head as possible.
I did everything to be able to sleep there. After the long day, full of activities I was so tired that it was no problem for me to sleep where I wanted. I just lay down and refused to move when mommy wanted to go to bed
The following day started way to early for my taste, but mommy and daddy seemed to like it – strange. This morning we looked at something that Torbjorn claimed was a kursu valley. Once again Torbjorn thought he could escape from the rest of us, but I stopped him. It’s true that mommy acted as a brake pad, as usual, but I kept the trail and saw to that Torbjorn couldn’t escape. Kursu valley was difficult. It looked like a narrow and deep cleft in the rock, but Torbjorn claimed that it had been formed because there were two different types of rock and that glaciofluvial powers had dug out the cleft between the different species of stone.
We stopped at several places to look at different types of rock during our way to the mountains. The Sorsele granite was intriguing. It could have many different colours, but it was always coarse-grained, regardless of colour. The sparagmite was a beautiful shade of purple and the mylonite was striped, but gray. Mommy and daddy oohed and aahed over the views. They said that you could clearly see the different layers of the mountains here and there during our trip. We went through areas with granite and areas with phyllite. Daddy says that phyllite is the same as mountain shale.
The culture this day consisted of us stopping and drinking coffee at Voitjajaure chapel. Everybody admired the big boulder in front of the chapel, but it was not until mommy lifted me up on the boulder that I could see that it was a conglomerate. We found another big boulder of conglomerate a bit further away along the road too.
Torbjorn tried to run away once more that day, he ran off along a narrow overgrown path. Once again I stopped his escape by hurrying after him. We reached him in a soapstone quarry. Someone had left a saw there, so people could try to cut out a piece of soapstone. I would have loved to try, but the saw was too big, and I didn’t want to ruin my pedicure by using my claws on the rock.
©2001- GeoNord
