Childhood Summers

 In the middle of winter, with lots of snow and freezing temperatures, I thought it was appropriate to put up a picture from a sunny summer's day 28 years or so ago.

When my son was little we often took a week to go canoeing and camping in a province called Dalsland in Sweden. There you can find vast areas of nature for anyone to explore. There is a law in Sweden giving everyone legal right of access to private land (open country), as long as you don't cause any damage. So you just fill your canoe with tinned food, tent and sleeping bags, and off you go.

Dalsland offers a large area of inter-connecting lakes in a densely forested landscape, so you can go for a long hike without seeing too many houses. One excellent feature of the canoe is that it carries all the weight; you just have to paddle at your own chosen speed. It does not matter whether you are a strong athlete or a weakling, you'll get there in the end.

In those days the water in the lakes was so clean that we used it for cooking and even drinking. We always brought frozen (initially), tinned orange juice. Then, in the middle of the lake, we took a big plastic container with the concentrated juice already in it, and lowered that into the water. The air inside the container rose to the surface in the shape of bubbles, and lovely, cool water started filling the container; and hey presto, we had our drink.

Every evening, after having put up the tent, we had our dinner by the camp fire in the sunset. Doesn't that sound tempting?