On July 23rd we were in Kajaani. By the river near the city center there is a forest criss-crossed by paths, and in the forest there were several spots where Impatiens glandulifera was growing in uncontrolled manner. This plant is spreading quite rapidly, and I except it will cause trouble in Finland in the future, as it is very competitive with native species. It should be cut down before the flowers turn into seeds.
(Posting title is from the poem Native Trees by W. S. Merwin.)
We stayed for two nights in Kuusamo. On July 22nd I went for a walk in the forests, and on the path some reindeer appeared from behind a tiny hill. They didn't notice me straight away, and I stayed still, but it didn't take long for them to spot me.
(Posting title is from the poem A Twenty-fourth Poem about Horses by John Peck.)
Here are three photographs hastily taken in Arktikum museum at Rovaniemi. I didn't correct the flaws in these photographs in post-processing, let them be as they were. But I recommend highly the exhibitions as Arktikum, they were of top quality and well presented.
One of the attractions was a photography exhibition by Pekka Sammallahti, titled Arctic Mindscapes, which was there until 3rd of August. Somehow I managed to confuse Pekka Sammallahti with Pentti Sammallahti, who is my all-time favorite photographer, and at first I was a bit disappointed not to see the kind of photographs I was expecting.
But when I had looked at the photographs for a while (none of them is shown here), I realized the quiet strength of them, for example a photograph which was mostly black-and-white, except for an iceberg floating on the sea, showing blue color.
Pekka and Pentti Sammallahti are brothers. Pekka Sammallahti is a professor at Oulu university, specializing in Saami language and culture. Pentti Sammallahti is a world-famous photographer.
(Posting title is from the poem Culture and the Universe by Simon J. Ortiz.)
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