I went to the office for the first time in three months.

I was looking forward to cycling to town but it rained all morning and I really don’t like cycling in the rain so I took the train. Regretted it. All these people everywhere. I can only describe the train as “crowded”. Not as crowded as it would have been a year ago but still.

On the plus side, I met a few of my colleagues face to face, which was really lovely. We had a great workshop (about recruitment and technical interviews) and plenty of the kind of idea-bouncing and discussions that just don’t happen online.

On my way home, I passed a pavilion in Spånga where some representatives for the city were gathering information about how the locals here use all the parks and other green spaces that we have. I realized that our family rarely uses the green spaces in Spånga. We’ve outgrown them. If we want greenery, we want something larger than the little patches that Spånga has to offer, and we’ll go to Starboparken or Nälsta at the very least.

It was interesting to see just how detailed the city’s inventory of green spaces is. The map used nearly ten different kinds of green colour to mark the different kinds of green spaces. “Nature park” is distinct from “nature in the city”, and a “city block park” is different from “park square”. Some of their terms I can’t even find English equivalents for.

The cherry tomatoes are all ripening. The golden ones are my favourites – juicy and bursting with sweetness. The red ones are a bit bland, but the dark ones have a deep, rich flavour.

A bit of stage 13, most of stage 12 and all of 12:1. From lake Stora Envättern to Mölnbo, 15 km.

My day followed the same basic pattern as yesterday. Up early, pack and get walking. Porridge stop after an hour or so. Lakes, pine forest, spruce forest.

I walked stage 12 before, quite recently even. Some bits of the trail – with the nicest lake views – I definitely recognized. A few hills and roads were vaguely familiar. But as soon as the path went through just plain forest, I could have been anywhere.

Knowing that I am heading home inevitably made me think of train timetables and such things, and the walking did not feel quite as mindfully relaxing as yesterday. It’s a good thing that I made this a three-day trip rather than just a weekend: now I had that one perfect day of hiking untouched by ordinary days or ordinary concerns.


When I reached Mölnbo and civilization, an older man I met asked me if I had run across any wolves. I found out that a couple of wolves have their territory in the area between Läggesta and Mölnbo, and they had been spotted recently quite near Mölnbo. The man seemed to be trying to get a scared reaction out of me, but I was more disappointed. I realize that the odds are small but I’d have loved to see a wolf.

Half of stage 14 and most of stage 13. From lake Glådran to lake Stora Envättern, 15 km.

I woke up shortly after six. I’m never hungry early in the morning, so I postponed breakfast and instead just packed up and started walking. Breakfast tastes much better when I am properly hungry. I stopped for a porridge breakfast around eight.

The Sörmlandsleden trail has been split into stages based on some kind of logic, but that logic is not always very obvious to me. Sometimes a stage ends (and the next one begins) by a road, which makes sense if you want the starting points to be easily accessible; other times it seems to be a random point in the middle of nowhere. The stages are not much use for planning an overnight hike: shelters and other suitable campsites are rarely near the end of a stage.

Instead I planned my days around lakes. Lakes are nice to look at, of course, but more importantly, they have water – which is most useful for doing the dishes and for cooking. This part of Sörmland is dotted with small lakes, so with a little bit of planning, it wasn’t hard to end each day near one of them.


For drinking water there are freshwater springs, well marked on the maps and clearly signposted. Unfortunately, all of the springs I passed today were dry, or nearly so, with just a muddy puddle at the bottom. I had filled up my water bottles at a spring yesterday, but when that water ran out today, I had to switch to lake water.

Most hikers agree that water in mountain brooks is safe to drink. Opinions about the potability of lake water in Sörmland vary. Some say you should boil or purify it; others say it’s OK to drink without treatment. I look at these lakes and see them all surrounded only by wild, clean nature – untouched by industry, agriculture, beaches or summer cottages… so I just went ahead and drank the water as is. A little bit of fish poop won’t kill me. The water had a slightly metallic taste, but didn’t cause any problems.


The hiking today was much like yesterday’s. Up and down rocky hills, through pine and spruce forest. Wonderfully wild and peaceful.

On top one of the hills there was a viewing tower, built by a local orienteering club back in 1969. It had a cute little money box for donations, dating back to the same era. The vintage sign exhorting visitors to donate to the tower’s upkeep was now accompanied by a much more modern sign with a Swish number. I didn’t climb the tower – I’m sure I would just have seen more of the same forests and lakes I’ve seen already – but donated anyway, because I liked the look of the sign so much.

The path down from the viewing tower passed through wonderfully rich lingonberry fields. After eating bilberries off and on all day yesterday, I was getting heartily tired of them and was more than happy to switch to lingonberries and the occasional bog bilberries.

If I went out to pick berries, I’d probably want the berry bushes to be on flat ground, but when I’m hiking, I like them best on uphill stretches of the path. That way I don’t have to bend all the way down to reach them (because bending with a rucksack can be awkward) and can just scoop them up without really stopping.

By now I’ve gotten properly into a hiking mood. My thoughts drift. Sometimes I notice the trees and bushes and rocks and roots around me. Sometimes I just walk without really noticing or thinking about anything in particular. Time passes, and I can’t say how much of it has passed.

I take a lot of breaks. After snack breaks, I sit and read for a while, instead of hurrying onwards. I started early and I don’t want to stop until around dinnertime, because once I’ve stopped and set up camp, there won’t be much to do. I’d rather spread my walking over a large part of the day than have a long empty evening.

There were several camping spots around Lake Envättern, so I could find one without any other campers and more or less pretend that I was out there alone.

Just as I had finished cooking dinner, it started raining. I’d gotten hit earlier in the day by a very sudden rain shower – it took just a couple of minutes to go from tentative drops to pouring rain, and I had to really scramble to get my rucksack covered and my rain clothes on. This time I knew what to expect, which helped a little bit, but I still only had a few minutes to get all my things into the tiny tent. It was a total jumble in there.

The tent fabric seems so incredibly flimsy that it’s hard to imagine it withstanding any kind of weather, but it kept me nice and dry.

Wildlife today: one heron flying above a lake. One vole, larger than a mouse but smaller than a rat, that ran across the path. Splashing noises from fish in the lakes. Bumblebees and grasshoppers. Thrushes and various unidentified tweeting birds.

Stages 15:1, half of 15 and half of 14. From Läggesta to lake Glådran, 17 km.

The connecting trail from Läggesta conveniently starts right in front of the train station. The first kilometre of the trail unfortunately goes right alongside a noisy main road, but soon after the trail turns off onto a smaller road, and then from that onto a lane. Quite soon I was on a pleasant shaded path, leaving civilization behind.



After that my surroundings were the usual mixture of Sörmland nature. Rocky pine forest with white mosses and heather; spruce forest with green mosses and ferns and bracken; mixed forest with spruce, birch and aspen. And bilberry bushes everywhere, with tons and tons of bilberries.

I’d walked half of stage 15 in 2017 and had most of the other half ahead of me today – but I realized now that there would be a gap between the two parts. I don’t know if I ever will walk all of Sörmlandsleden, but I want to keep that possibility open, so a gap here would leave a real itch behind.

I hid my pack behind a rock (not because I worried about thieves, but because I thought other hikers might worry if they found an abandoned rucksack) and just walked that missing bit back and forth, so I could check it off my list.

I felt like a gazelle walking without a rucksack. So fast, so easy!

The contrast was extra strong when I picked up my pack again, because the path went steeply uphill from there, up to a high cliff with views over the whole area, with all its forests and lakes.

Today was an excellent day for walking. Warm and summery still, but mostly cloudy, so it didn’t get too hot. And because it’s a Friday, there were very few other people on the trail.

I like hiking on my own, and having the forest to myself. I love the peace and quiet. Hearing nothing but the wind, the creak of my rucksack, the occasional bird call and the buzzing of bumblebees.

The first day of a hike, it usually takes me a while to get into the groove. I tend to worry about whether I’m walking fast enough to get to my planned destination by the end of the day. Mentally I’m partly still in my everyday life, with plans and times to keep. It takes time to let go of all of that, and some conscious effort. I forced myself to not think too much about the time, to take breaks, to be present in the here and now.

Macro photography always helps me relax. I tried to capture the bumblebees in the heather, but it was hard, because they never stayed still! The heather flowers are so tiny that a bumblebee empties one in the blink of an eye and is always moving on to the next flower.



I stopped for the night at a nice little camping site next to lake Glådran. The site was very small, but unexpectedly luxurious. Not only did it have a fireplace and a picnic table, and a flat area for putting up a tent: there was also a bucket for water, and even a rake for clearing the ground of the inevitable pine cones.

What with the coronavirus, I’m not going on a hike in the mountains this autumn. They all “take precautions” but really, sharing a sleeper compartment in a train with random strangers all night, or cooking dinner shoulder to shoulder with random strangers in a mountain hut (or worse, trying to cook dinner while dancing around them at a two-metre distance) just does not seem like a sensible idea right now.

So, alternative plans. I’m taking tomorrow off for a three-day hike along Sörmlandsleden. It’s not as scenic and doesn’t offer the wide vistas of the Swedish Fells, but the forests of Sörmland offer some pretty nice hiking. And it costs nothing (now that I’ve paid thousands for a tent, haha) other than a day’s worth of flex hours, so I could actually do several of these.

I’ve checked off stages 1 through 12. The Sörmlandsleden web site suggests walking next few stages in reverse, starting with 15:1 in Läggesta and ending with one of the various connecting trails in the area – Nyfors, Mölnbo, Gnesta, or even walking all the way to Järna. I guess it’s because walking in this direction gives you more choice regarding the length of the trip. Or maybe because it’s easier to catch a commuter train back from Mölnbo/Gnesta/Järna than to time your arrival in Läggesta to fit in with the regional train schedule. Whatever the reason, I’m going to follow their suggestion, starting in Läggesta tomorrow, walking stages 15:1, half of 15, 14, 13, 12 and 12:1, and finishing in Mölnby some time on Sunday.

The official estimate is 45 km; reality will be several kilometres more, I’m sure. It always is.

My pack weighs 16.5 kg with everything except my toothbrush and my keys, both of which I will add tomorrow morning, and my camera, which I don’t pack in the rucksack but keep in a waist bag for instant access. A bit on the heavy side, but I really can’t think of anything I would want to be without.

The hardest thing to pack is food. How much do I actually eat in a day? And how much extra will I eat because I’m walking up and down rocky hills and carrying this pack? At home I just cook food and eat food without worrying much about precise amounts. If I make too much, I’ll have leftovers for lunch the next day. If dinner was too small, I can have a piece of bread later in the evening. In the mountain huts also I can just buy more if I have too little of something. But there are no huts or shops of any kind along Sörmlandsleden. I really don’t want to be carrying leftovers, and I really don’t want to go hungry, either.

It looks like summer outside, but is beginning to feel like autumn. Mornings are cool. Noontime is warmish rather than hot; I put on an extra layer when I have lunch outside.

The summer flowers are still going strong, even sending out new buds still. I’ve never been home all summer, with no trips or hikes, and never been able to take such good care of my flowers. They’ve always started to die on mye some time in August. Look at what diligent watering can do!

Earlier in the summer, the bushy sunflower was always the first one to start wilting and showing signs of needing water. Now the African daisy has taken over that role.

Our windows got cleaned today. With more money than time, we pay a company to do it for us.

The plants on the windowsill in my office corner are the ones that I brought with me from the tretton37 office when we switched to remote working back in March.

They’ve all grown a lot in this half-year. The crassula is 50% taller, and is beginning to send out branches. The dracaena and the ficus both have twice as many leaves now.

And just look at that thing with purple and gray leaves! It’s twenty times the size it was back in spring. I’m going to have to find a new place for it pretty soon. It’s getting squeezed between the window and the blackout blinds, which is starting to squish the leaves on one side.

Here’s what they looked like in February:

… aaand here I am, ripping up a good 15 rows of my knitting again. This is starting to turn into a bad habit.

This time I figured out the problem, though, so hopefully this was the last time. Apparently I tend to forget the last increase on right-leaning rows. And I only notice when I get to the corresponding decreases many rows later, and discover that I don’t have enough stitches left to decrease. Now I’ll be extra vigilant with those increases.

It rained most of the day yesterday, and part of today, too, but in between we had a half day of warm sunshine. Eric and I cycled to Gåseborg to do some advance scouting for a scout hike. Here we stopped on the way back to eat some late-season bilberries.

The evenings are getting darker and the days grayer. It feels like we’re on a downward trajectory now, and I have to grab hold of each beautiful moment that I get.