Sunday, July 20, 2014

But I have entered into sympathy

We spent five nights at Kilpisjärvi in Lapland. Now it is time to start the journey south, to where sun sets each day.

The fells around Kilpisjärvi are breathtaking, but there are some drawbacks, such as the helicopters and small aircraft which generate quite a lot of noise in the otherwise silent landscape. And the route between Kilpisjärvi and Halti fell is really popular with hikers, it is not the direction you want to go if you want to be by yourself in the wilderness.

I expect to return to Kilpisjärvi at some point, to continue exploring the fells.

The photograph was taken at Särkänniemi on July 3rd.

(Posting title is from the poem Cleon by Robert Browning.)

4 comments:

Markus said...

Very fine Juha! There's a lot of food for interpretation in your image regarding an animal's life. But that's maybe only my personal punctum

Juha Haataja said...

Well, this individual wasn't especially keen on looking at the humans on the other side of the bars.

Regarding Särkänniemi amusement park, there has recently been discussion about the five bottlenose dolphins they have in the dolphinarium. It isn't quite the life one would hope such intelligent animals to have, even though I'm sure the personnel does best they can in the circumstances.

Markus said...

"... in the circumstances." - That exactly is the point, and we've had discussions about dolphinariums in Germany (we still have two) for quite a while.

I grew up in "Flipper" times and remember to have seen dolphins at the octoberfest when I was a boy, insensitive for animal welfare issues at that time. Meanwhile I would say that dolphins are not made for cages/bassins, but that probably holds true for a big number of species. As I now have two vegan daughters, this is an ongoing discussion in our family...

Juha Haataja said...

It is a rather thorny dilemma, the fact that many people seem to be rather alienated from topics dealing with nature and other living species besides humans (and in fact it seems that only "I" exists for some people), and then there are people who are becoming really sensitive to issues such as how we treat other living things.

So, how to reach those who are insensitive or desensitized - here things such as dolphinariums may play a role. But the dolphins on display, they are then "casualties of war", if one can use such a metaphor.