Thursday, October 14

The woods, 15:23
Apparently badgers live in Vartiokylä, and probably in the woods. Someone spotted some recently and took some photographs. Loch Ness monster style, they show blurred creatures scuttling into the trees, but they revealed themselves clearly enough for people to identify them. Since they have become an endangered species in Finland many people expressed surprise.
This afternoon, after a morning of working feverishly on some VAKEN documents, I decide to have a walk before returning for an online meeting: a VAKEN meeting, no less.
I walk through the woods and turn off the path and up into the trees, looking for badgers or deer or anything else of interest. I come across the crampons and an other metellic fixtures drilled or hammered into the rock sometime during the Winter War. I stop and photograph one.
These fittings constitute the main reason why nobody can “develop” the woods or replace them with new apartments. The remains of the fortifications here (metal fittings, as well as bits of walls and floors dug into the rocks) count as protected sites of heritage, and they span the woods.
I pass a few of them but find no animal life that doesn’t hear me coming and hide before I can see it.