Chose your path with care.
Walk in nature. Walk among trees.
Choose a small winding road. Get in touch with scents and colours.
Go for a walk no matter the weather.
You will not regret it 🙂
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating;
there is no such thing as bad weather just different kinds of good weather.
John Ruskin
Yesterday was a beautiful day.
I chose the paths running along rivers and ponds.
… Let the woodpecker drum and drum on a hickory stump.
He has been swimming in red and blue pools somewhere hundreds of years
And the blue has gone to his wings and the red has gone to his head.
Let his red head drum and drum.
Let the dark pools hold the birds in a looking-glass.
And if the pool wishes, let it shiver to the blur of many wings, old swimmers from old places.
Let the redwing streak a line of vermillion on the green wood lines.
And the mist along the river fix its purple in lines of a woman’s shawl on lazy shoulders.
Carl Sandburg
Last Sunday the meteorologists had predicted sunshine, only interrupted by heavy rain with a touch of hail and snow showers.
We hurried off to the forest.
Here at the clay pit we saw the sun shine for a minimum of thirty minutes.
But lovely while it lasted 🙂
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.
‘We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,’
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.
Oliver Herford, I Heard a Bird Sing
Several years after the Bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807, a British soldier confessed an assassination on an English treasurer in the Great Deer Park north of Copenhagen.
On his deathbed, he told that he and his buddy had buried the Money Chest with the soldiers salaries under the characteristic oak tree northeast of the Hermitage Castle.
The treasure was sought at the request of Queen Victoria, and there was a lot of digging around the old oak tree but the regiment box didn’t materialise.
So where did the treasure go?
Did the other soldier return to the oak tree to bury the money somewhere else?
Or were the buddies in crime watched by other people as they dug down the money. People who behave like the magpie when it keeps an eye on where the squirrel digs its supplies down for the winter 🙂
The occupation of Copenhagen was led by Arthur Wellesley in 1807.
The English formed a semicircle around Copenhagen from Svanemoellen to Kalveboderne
Some soldiers lived at Sorgenfri Castle in Kongen Lyngby, and camped in the Great Deer Park, Jaegersborg Dyrehave.
Today, thirty minutes before sunset 🙂
Saturday morning the fog wraps itself around everything .
The light changes rapidly,
The contours of people and landscape change.
A dreamlike landscape shrouded in mist and fragments of blue sky.
The Light Changes Everything.
I love that sea view, where ships in the horizon line look as if they are about to tumble over the edge of the earth.
That’s the kind of experience you can have in Dragoer. Furthermore you can see the bridge which connect Denmark with Sweden, Oeresundsbroen.
But wait! There is an other important subject out there. A lighthouse on a caisson 6 kilometres out in the sea, Drogden Fyr.
The Navy has used it as a Coastal Lookout Station since 1937. The Germans occupied the lighthouse during World War II. They mounted an air defence grenade, and used it when British planes fired at the lighthouse. The men who work here have no desire for another job. At least not, if you ask the boss of the lighthouse.
Every Wednesday is the changeover day. Fresh men and fresh supplies sail 6 kilometres to their second home.
They have their own room, a common living room, and a large workroom, which is their lookout point.
About 100 big ships pass the lighthouse every day and the channel is only 300 meters wide.
Drogden Lighthouse is an outpost, but only in the literal sense.
A walk among the old well preserved houses in Dragoer is a great way to spend an hour or two. The cinema in Dragoer has two honorary members. One of them is Ghita Norby and the other one is: Viggo Mortensen. Known as Aragorn in “The Lord of the Rings”. He has family in Dragoer!
“Dragør was founded in the 12th century, and grew quickly as a fishing port. In 1370, the Hanseatic League was granted some trade privileges in the town. Dragør continued to grow – as the home of one of the largest fishing fleets in the country and as a base for salting and processing fish.” Wikipedia.
The Danish society for Nature Conservation stands behind the idea of The Path of Gods.
The inspiration came from a Danish author Martin A. Hansen, who wrote about a trail system about 64 kilometres long which goes from Mosede Fort to Vellerup Vig in Zealand, Denmark,
Martin A. Hansen did a thesis that ‘There has been a trade road, an army road and a path of Gods from Koege Bay to the Isefjord through wetlands, bogs, meadows, fields and forests.
Not just one for wheelbarrow or horseback riding, but a range of roads changing from century to millennium.
There are trails for the first burial mounds builders, the masters of the stone age monuments, there are the bronze age mounds, and finally the abode and grave grounds of the Iron Age and Viking age.’
# Lethrica, The Historical Associations in Lejre Municipality.
I had some very fascinating walks in an area enriched by history and great beauty. My walks continued over a year and became a beautiful journey in time and place.
‘Back in my drawers’ I found this video from some parts of the path of Gods.
Relax for four minutes and don’t expect wonders 🙂 apart from the music!
The domain Naturvandring-dk, is no longer mine!
Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north-wind’s breath,
And stars to set; but all,
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!
John Milton
Belief in our mortality, the sense that we are eventually going to crack up and be extinguished like the flame of a candle, I say, is a gloriously fine thing. It makes us sober; it makes us a little sad; and many of us it makes poetic. But above all, it makes it possible for us to make up our mind and arrange to live sensibly, truthfully and always with a sense of our own limitations. It gives us peace also, because true peace of mind comes from accepting the worst.
Deprived of immortality, the proposition of living becomes a simple proposition. It is this: that we human beings have a limited span of life to live on this earth, rarely more than seventy years, and that therefore we have to arrange our lives so that we may live as happily as we can under a given set of circumstances. … It made us therefore, cling to life─the life of the instinct and the life of senses─on the belief that, as we are all animals, we can be truly happy only when all our normal instincts are satisfied normally. This applies to the enjoyment of life in all its aspects.
A sad poetic touch is added to this intense love of life by the realization that this life we have is essentially mortal. For if this earthly existence is all we have, we must try the harder to enjoy it while it lasts. A vague hope of immortality detracts from our wholehearted enjoyment of this earthly existence.
Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living.
HANNA'S WALK 
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