Autumn has been incredible this year, and while many places are just letting go of the summer heat, we’re already getting ready for the first snow.

It’s been unusually warm, and the dogs have been swimming until late September. We’ve had t-shirt weather in October, and most days were well above the average.

The only thing that is right on time as always is the darkness that becomes even more apparent with daylight saving time. Today, the sun will set at 16h03, so anytime the sun is out, we try to soak up as much light as possible 🙂

Pretty and soft moss:

Because a lot of the woods in our area were cut in the previous years, it’s always a delight to find some lush green fairy forest full of moss-covered rocks and grumpy old trees:

Misty morning always make me happy! I love this hint of mystery and calmness.

This used to be a dark, green forest right by our home:

Curious creature as we are, we love treasure hunting.
I like looking for gemstones, crystals, or fossils, but that takes a lot of preparation and tools, so an easy way to fit something into our daily life is Geocaching. Most of the caches in this area are ‘micro caches’, which means small tubes with a bit of paper as a logbook inside. They are not the most exiting ones, but a great way to explore a new area- and this is how we found some of the beautiful forests.

However, one recent cache was a bigger one with toys inside (so if you have something to swap, you can take something out), and one was a game.

A gorgeous sunset in our backyard:

And I found the most joyful ride in town:

I’ve been eager to travel, but when I see my dogs all happy with our autumn wanderings, it’s hard impossible to leave!
Normally we escape for a bit when the moose hunt starts as the hunters can be quite fanatic in our area, but this year we had some projects going on.

– So far, I had several encounters with hunters, all rather quiet. I see their gear, we get out. Most of them are reasonable enough to not approach us. (I only had this once last summer and it made me very angry).
– I almost ran over the same hunting dog twice that was following a trail that crossed the main road. He was lucky that I was driving slowly because I saw hunters about 1km earlier on this road so I was very alert and driving slowly. At regular speed, there would be no more dog.
– I read that in Scandinavia, gun silencers/suppressors are legal, while they are not where I’m from (Belgium). I used to think of them as a red flag when I saw them. If I’m correct the law changed in 2022, which is probably why I haven’t been woken up by gunshots the day the hunting season started. I still hear some, day and night, but way less intrusive.

– If you’re visiting the Nordics during hunting season, you might see off-leash dogs running around in the forest/countryside/god-forgotten roads. They are not lost but often wearing something neon + a tracker (you can see a large antenna) – so someone somewhere is following them. While I think this is irresponsible dog ownership and a destructive way of hunting, you can let them do their thing (if you’re a tourist and you want to give the ‘lost dog’ a ride to the police station, I wouldn’t complain). Now and then I come across hunters asking if I have seen their dog, so I guess some issues can arise, but normally they will get picked up.
Once I had one following us around, completely smitten by one of my girls, so I stayed in place and an embarrassed owner arrived shortly after. They were probably disappointed that I wasn’t a juicy moose, but well, one of my girls liked the attention 🙂

Autumn also means that my leafy Lucy and Yak dungas fit right in:

Living up north has taught me to always enjoy the season we’re in. So while I look forward to the first snow (last year we had snow on Halloween), I cherish every autumnal day where we can walk anywhere we want, the weather is gentle, and the colors delicious.

I hope you also enjoyed these bits of our Nordic autumn as well!

Take care!
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