At the time you could not have imagined the time when you

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The length of day is now 11 h 37 min, which means that there is much less dark time that we still had a month ago. Today I went for a walk in the north parts of Nuuksio, enjoying the sunshine, which got amplified when sunlight reflected from snow and ice.

Two weeks ago I intended to go walking west and south of lake Saarijärvi, but the parking place was blocked by a big snow bank. Today the snow had mostly melted away, and there were two other cars already parked roadside.

After walking past lake Saarijärvi, I went to lake Sarkkinen and lake Suolikas. A group of people were skating on the ice on lake Suolikas, which seemed a bit late in the season, but they seemed to know what they were doing.

I continued to lake Valkealampi, and from there south to lake Ruuhijärvi. Then I walked east past lake Orajärvi and lake Urja, and finally towards north to lake Iso Majaslampi and back to the car via lake Sarkkinen and lake Saarijärvi.

I got three hours of walking today, and walked quite a long way. On the south side of the hills the snow had mostly melted away, and on the north side, and on the swamps, the snow had frozen during the night so that it easily carried a person walking.

I'm currently reading the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Highly recommended, even though there is the usual joke about Finns: "How do you tell the difference between a Finnish introvert and a Finnish extrovert? The introvert looks at his own shoes when he’s talking to you, the extrovert will look at yours."

The photographs were taken on February 17th and 18th.

(Posting title is from the poem Hymn to Life by James Schuyler.)