Hi!
I have so many impressions from visiting the Karelian mountain Vottovaara that this huge amount does not allow me to tell a story about this journey in any orderly way.
Therefore, perhaps I will stray from the current topic and jump to others or repeat myself.
The very road to this place was full of adventures. It is enough that it took more than twelve hours by minibus along the taiga roads.
For me, staying in the forest is not exotic. I often had to live in tents for long periods. And I didn't think I could be surprised by anything else.
But I was wrong. When we first climbed the mountain, I thought that we had entered the otherworld.
Perhaps the prevailing favorable circumstances played a role here. There was no wind, so there was no tree noise. Although, if there was a wind, there would simply be no place for it to make noise.
Here, at the top of the mountain, there was already a tundra belt, and all the trees were small.
Secondly, all these trees were black without leaves. Last year there was a fire on the mountain and many trees were damaged by it. There is also a lot of ash left underfoot from the fire. We walked in absolute silence through the black ashes, bypassing the black trees.
And these trees had a very intricate structure of trunks and branches. I don't know why this is happening here, but the shape of the tree trunks is strongly twisted. Somewhere in a spiral, somewhere in some kind of chaotic order.
Someone explains this by weather conditions: wind, frosts. And someone believes that the reason lies in the energies of the earth, which burst to the surface here and cripple trees in this way.
I do not know which version is correct, but the result is amazing.
Of course, not all trees were affected by the fire. I climbed a small hill and photographed the landscape of the mountain top. There are almost no seids here, but the picture of the area has a very characteristic shade.
Rocks, low coniferous trees, clouds in the white sky and the silence of this place.
Although all the people from our company came from completely different places, they behaved like a team. Everyone was impressed by what they saw. Everyone knew roughly where they were going, but no one expected to see such a fabulous landscape!
