Squak mountain

For the past few days, I have a hurting shoulder and neck from sleeping odd hours and bad posture, stopping me from going out and do stuff. But today we had an amazing winter day in the sun, had to leave my habitat and go for a hike.

It isn’t quite winter-winter in the Pacific Northwest yet. Well, at least not by the definition of winter in this general area (this far north from the equator) in the northern hemisphere. PNW winters however, are subtle: occasional snow but mostly it rains. The forests are still green, not just the coniferous trees but undergrowth comprising mostly of ferns and rustic winterproof trees and shrubs such as holly. The forest floor was wet brimming with life - flora, mostly with frequent symptoms of the presence fauna in all forms, insects to mammals.

Three hours later, I had a handful of Apple ProRAW files from my phone exported into Lightroom Mobile for editing.

A day away from Copenhagen

Over the past several centuries we have built remarkable cities and have made every attempt to make each one look unique and reflect the culture of the people living in it. But more than the significance of these creations in human history, I admire and prefer what lies outside and often out of reach for most part, throughout our existence, the Earth in its nascent form.

Sixty minutes driving south of Copenhagen starts to look like sixty minutes driving outside of most of the cities in upper northern hemisphere: The farmlands, trees, wide open land, crops, windmills, barns. I would not call it as attractive as any national park or preserve but it was a relief to get out of the city for a change, after we rented a car for the final two days of the trip. While I have been in and around Copenhagen over the past, had never been to the island of Møn before. As any other adventure, this was not planned for months or weeks - it was a fifteen research on the internet the night before, in attempt to find something new and different to do in Denmark before flying back home, and also a destination the weather forecast approved my not weather-sealed Sony photography gear.

And so I picked Møns Klint - a six kilometer stretch of tall chalk cliffs over Baltic Sea.

We picked a short hike that takes one through a prairie to steep stairs winding to the seaside with the white cliff to the back. At the end of the hike, there were no trail markers in a foreign language, nor buildings or structures to indicate the location of the place on the planet. For a brief moment, I felt I was not too far from home.