snow there snow here snow everywhere

The much needed winter holiday week is almost gone, I'm enjoying the sunny weekend of it. It's been really sunny all along, already Friday last week had a spectacular sunset to offer. The first weekend we spent visiting my sister, skiing, eating good food and hiking on a hill with the help of snowshoes. So much fun! We are thinking of buying snowshoes, there's a hill right across the lake from our house and it needs to be explored.That isn't the hill across the lake from our house, that's Ylläs-tunturi in northern Finland. We hiked on the nearby hill Kellostapuli (502 m above sealevel). I highly recommend the place, I've been going there for over 20 years every winter. The slopes are open until Mayday, some years even to Mothers day (mid May).

Skiing is a very nice sport indeed. Besides down hill (which I've done since I was five), I've recently rediscovered cross country skiing again. The enthusiasm for pushing ones way along the forests and lake ices was effictively killed in school, since it wasn't optional to attend skiing contests and the main memory of cross country involved horribly burning sensation in lungs, taste of blood in the mouth and sore legs for a week. But it isnt' so. When I can dictate the speed and direction myself, it's so much fun. There's space to think things over or just let your thoughts fly. Especially on the ice of lake, when the sun is shining, there is a sort of a freedom feeling.