Gone Fishin’- Week 19

After an abysmal two weeks without Henkka, he finally returned to us on Monday for a day of nature knowledge.  Whooohoooo!!!  I was so happy to see him walk into the classroom on Monday morning, I did a few silent fist pumps to the air.  The class was a repeat on fish, but I still learned a lot of new information, so all-in-all it was a good day.

Henkka’s back!!!

And he brought us presents!  (It’s a perch)

Charlie hassled Mikko-teacher about shelter building, so come Tuesday morning we were all packed into the cars, heading for the school’s forest.

Gearing up to build a shelter

It took a good portion of the morning to select a location for our shelter, but eventually we found a lovely clump of trees near a lake.  With sixteen of us, it took most of the day to assemble our shelter, and that was with the spruce branches precut for us by the forestry students.

Our shelter location

Collecting logs for the frame is hard work…

Putting the pieces together

I can’t imagine how long it would take to build this shelter in the wild by yourself.  It isn’t very practical, but it is sturdy and will maintain its structure for months to come.

Outside is almost completed!

Time to stand back and admire our efforts

It was truly special to spend a day outside under the glittering birch trees.  They reminded me a bit of the Truffula trees in the Lorax.

Absolutely stunning

Wednesday brought another day inside, but this one was more bearable as we spent the morning discussing business plans in Tampere and the afternoon at the aquarium studying fish.  We also visited some sporting goods stores to stock up for our ski trip.  It was a productive day and I enjoyed going to the aquarium.   Fishing is an important, all-season pastime in Finland so an in-depth understanding of the native species is a must for a wilderness guide.

Native Finnish Fish

There was also this wicked iguana…not that they roam around Finland, but still cool…

Thursday and Friday it was more customer gig work – bleh – and a fish identification test.  I am proud to say I didn’t miss a single fish, though if you asked me to identify them now, I would fail.  🙂  I would make my Uncle Gene proud!

I have to say, I cannot wait for this customer gig work to be OVER.  It is taking up so much time, and now that we have to redo the ski trip plan (we ended up changing locations to Hossa due to lack of snow), I have even less time to complete everything.  I still managed to hike out to the shelter we built with Charlie and Andrew on Friday though…*sheepish grin*  It was nice to spend an evening in the fresh air and our shelter did a superb job of keeping us protected from the elements and surprisingly warm.  It was a long 2-hour hike back to Kuru in the morning, but it was worth it.  Between Andrew’s halva, the cognac, and Charlie’s jacket potatoes, it was a great night.

I also house-sat for Tim upon returning on Saturday.  I will never tire of housesitting.  It really is the greatest job.  A mini vacation, a sliver of silent solitude that comes with a bit of compensation.  It can’t be beat.  I also had the privilege of working on Tim and Piia’s 1500 piece puzzle.  That occupied a few hours.  Maybe I would have more time to complete all my school work if I didn’t keep finding distractions…

Hiking back to Kuru

-Em