Autumn colours wait for no one

Autumn colours wait for no one. One weekend the birches are still green, the next they are golden, and a week later the leaves are already on the ground.

We drove to Heinola and walked over the ridge down to the lake shore. The bilberry shrubs were red, the aspen yellow and the spruce dark green, with a low, clear light over everything.

There is something about the autumn colours that forces you to stop.

On the way we picked the last lingonberries and ate our packed lunch on a rock. Warm cocoa, sandwiches, a couple of apples. Nobody said anything for a long time, and that was good.

I took far too many photographs, but none of them tells you what the forest smelled like.