Sun with periods of rain

Such a blissfully sparsely populated country, Estonia (not as if you didn't know, but for the benefit of strangers surfing on by). People don't usually dote on you here, but then again, I don't expect or want that either. What there often is, though, is a laissez-faire attitude or benign neglect (the latter being a parenting term; some also think it is the best way to raise children).

For example, the Tartu railway station today. Odd place. It caught fire years ago and the railway has simply worked on around it. They've figured out something important about the railway here in Estonia -- that you don't need the ornate station buildings. Some 19th century folly. As long as the tunnel underneath the Tartu station (to track 2 of a total 2) doesn't collapse, nothing will change here for years. There won't be a bench on platform 1, it would attract the non-pub drinker contingent. But see, the staff are cool (railway people seem to be, by and large). They let me on the Tartu-Tallinn train 50 minutes before departure. The onboard wireless Internet was already on (typical) and they soon turned on the AC current to first class. Why not -- the train is just sitting there, because there's no one else to service. In some countries, if there were only demand for one train a day, the train would still pull out of a closed hangar in the depths of the station and proceed to the platform ten minutes before departure, but here it's just sitting there.

The downside to the benign neglect is occasional paroxysms of police action and mindless rules, astonishing examples of juhmus, a kind of brazen stupidity. Just like the weather this summer, sun with periods of rain. My wife's expression is less meteorological: people get corks up their asses at the oddest times.

A sunny day in Räpina on Tuesday. I had bought an extension cord from the Ehitaja store there the week before. My wife noticed that it was marked for indoor use only. Maybe I'm just ultra-wary of things that crackle and spark, but I thought it might not be a good idea to use for pumping wells in the rain. I took it back. They let me exchange it -- though I have to say the the woman was already prepared for battle, perhaps due to a past experience, informing me in a peremptory tone that they could only offer store credit.

Well, the new cord I picked was about 10 dollars cheaper. No problem, right? Wrong. They basically would not me leave the store until I picked out something else to make the prices match. I said to ring me up for some widgets. Then they asked me to go to the widget aisle and do the math myself.

I suggested they might remember me, since it's a town of 2,500, and let me use up the credit gradually. They said no.

"Well, come on now," I said, "I don't need anything else."

"You have to buy something else."

"It's on me. Keep the 100 kroons."

"We can't do that."

"Why not?"

(Something about a computer, I think.)

"What are you going to do, have me arrested for stealing a negative amount of money?"

I realized I might have given them an idea. So I added that I had to go outside, put the cord in my backpack and "see what else I had room for", since I was on foot and it was ten miles home. (This is true, I did walk it, very pleasant.) At that point I melted hastily away, though I was deeply disturbed, and took the alley behind the shrubberies, listening for possible sirens.

Mikitamäe symbol

The official explanation is that the symbol on the Mikitamäe rural municipality's coat of arms is a piece of Seto jewellery (and the green is for the Centre Party, who run local politics), but there's something futuristic about it. An amateur anthropologist who came across such a symbol in the woods or on a rock face might be tempted to conclude that early people had been visited by very distant visitors who possessed knowledge of nuclear technology.

A possible answer to the question posed in the last blog post -- what is it with all these meteorite craters, anyway?

Road to Räpina

Although some may refer to our location as wilderness, the truth is we are surrounded by towns of several thousand people in all directions. Võru is the metropolis with 16,000 people (22 miles), Põlva is a nice country town with slightly less than half as many people (18 miles), and the sleepy river town Räpina, slightly less than half the size of Põlva, is the closest one at just 10 miles. Unlike the roads to the other towns, the road to Räpina is gravel, so it takes just as long as it does to get to Põlva, not that 15-20 minutes is much of a journey.

For most of June, I only went back and forth between Põlva's Bauhof and Selver shopping centre, but I'm starting to realize that the Räpina direction is just as useful. We are officially in Niitsiku village, which is on the way to Põlva, but the ties to the community seem to be stronger on the Räpina side. And there's the fact that if I fell asleep in the boat and drifted downstream, I might wake up in Räpina.

Two km north of us is a wealthy farm (brick house, nice landscaping, a tractor lot and the only metal silo like building in these parts, everything else being traditional log or fieldstone. “Alex-Agro”is the centre of agricultural life. If you need a tractor to plow your field for 400 kr an hour, or need a load of sand or gravel delivered, this is where you ask.

Just past Alex-Agro is Kahkva village – four or five farms no closer together than anywhere else -- one of which has a small store in a trailer, Liiwi pood, which I guess makes it a village. I have not been to the store, as it usually seems closed, but I walked past the store on the way to Mikitamäe (yet another settlement with a store, 5 miles away) one day when I didn't have the car and the farm's young Rottweiler latched on to my boot, painfully. So I don't think I will be visiting that store very often.

Another km down the road and you get to a well-kept farm with a nice fieldstone granary at a crossroads. They have the only herd of cows within 10 km. I finally introduced myself today and bought some of their unpasteurized goodness, a quart of milk ($0.40), a kilo of curds ($3) and a 500 ml of sour cream ($0.80). Felt a little guilty, as when I paid our workmen $4 an hour and they seemed happy.

You bear right to go to Räpina, but keep on going straight and eventually you get to where another American-Estonian family lives. This is where we draw our drinking water until our new well is finished. (Our old well is used for watering the garden and washing dishes, and occasionally boiling potatoes in their jackets.) Their place is a different sort of countryside, more classic Estonian, right down to the lone cornflower growing by the door. Ours is a little modest Seto-style forest farm with an old Russian stove, one hectare surrounded by woods and a river out back. Our driveway goes out to a road, as do the ones in Kahkva (or most places). But this is like a “sisekvartal” or inner block — it takes three or four right or left turns on dirt roads to get there, so it’s more remote in some ways. Lots of open fields, bigger buildings, taller hardwood trees in the farmyards. Their farm was once wealthy. Right now they have less living space than we have, but when the main house is renovated – a one-man task that will take the peremees two or three years – the farm will have risen once more.

About 1 km before Räpina is another meteorite crater. (What is it with this area?) Big sign off the road, but we drove for a while and never found a trailhead or crater.

Mini-review of the War of Independence monument

I became the last person in Estonia to see the new monument on Sunday. No, it's still there; I just mean that probably everyone else has seen it. I had avoided the spoilers. No Google street view for me. Before I wrenched my eyes away, I did see Vello Vikerkaar's dramatically foreshortened cropped photograph, which made it look towering. In fact it was only half of the height I expected it would be.

The funny thing was, we were giving some friends an amateur tour of the town, walking on Pärnu mnt toward the square. Naturally we weren't talking about Jaani kirik's place in the national consciousness but rather about the new monument. When we neared the intersection and square and the freedom cross hove into view, I mentioned about how it had been a lightning rod** for controversy, with patriotic Estonians split into "pro" and "con" camps on the consideration of utility and aesthetics. I mentioned that I was among those who didn't see the utility of it at the present juncture. Kind of like the fad with erecting signage for historical districts of Tallinn, for historical parishes in the countryside. All very well, but ill-timed.

Then our guest asked, "Which structure are we talking about?" It was a fair question, actually.

I pointed, and she may actually have aligned her line of sight to see what I was pointing at.

"Ah, the cross."

"Is the hill behind it new as well?"

"No, that's Harjumägi, that's much older."

A closer inspection and walk up the monument's steps revealed that the thing was quite attractive on the microlevel. The shell is translucent and the panels of the glass are held together with bolts that are just visible. It looks like something you might find at the Museum of Applied Art and Design. Or a new flavour of iMac housing ("mineral").


** Apparently the electrical work is anything but good -- as of 21 June it lacked lightning protection.

Laulupalooza

Last night's Song Festival festivities started in the most beautiful Estonian June evening imaginable, except it was July. It was utterly clear that it would rain at some point. We arrived in Tallinn at 3pm and took a cab to Kadriorg park -- about half of the way to the song festival grounds from the centre -- and saw about half of the parade of choirs.

Naively I expected the music to start at 7pm, like the program said. This was my vision of the evening: the kids would cheer the pageantry, the lighting of the flame from torches carried from and through the heartland, maybe even hear some music before they got too tired, and we would be walking home through Kadriorg around 10:30 or 11pm, enjoying a brilliant sunset.

Instead the massed choir had not even started to mass at 7pm. When they finally were all gathered under the arch at about 8:20pm, that was the signal...for the rain to start.

The kids were troopers. Morgan, sitting on my shoulders, admonished the people around us to attention when the President was droning on (that's not to say his remarks were in any way boring, just a characterization of what his voice sounds like to me through the PA. It sounded like a wax cylinder recording of President Garfield crossed with a Lutheran pastor in a big stone church.) Soon after, lightning flashed and we were ducking for the cover of the tall trees and the sound of singing reached us indirectly.

My wife had two good points about the Song Festival -- "there's only point in going if you're a singer" (there's 25,000 of them on stage in a quiet year) and "the dance festival would have been better because at least there would be something for young kids to see".

Fair enough. I think that's something to shoot for in 2014.

To me, the Song Festival is practically a sacred duty -- this year we even made a sort of pilgrimage, from three hours south -- but to ease the possible transition from quiet country life to happy chaos, it's important to remember:

Serendipity is definitely the key word. With open seating and over 50,000 people, everyone is trying to find each other. Cell phone networks broke down. It was worse than New Year's Eve. We met none of the people we were supposed to meet and many of the people we didn't expect to see, but that was OK as well.

I had never seen so many vendors and concession stands, but even this infrastructure was strained. There were at least three gourmet coffee vendors -- a sign of how life has become more yuppified -- and nothing would have been better, with all of the kid-schlepping we had to do, than a hot cup of joe. The lines were 50 yards long. I tried standing in line on three occasions but none of them even moved.

So those are my two helpul hints. Bring a Thermos/picnic basket (it seemed to be OK) and don't hog the cell phone network with incessant questions ("now where are you? are you still there?")

Another lazy day on the river

This time I took along my waterproof eTrex GPS, after the indignity of getting lost. Nothing but the same -- lazy, open waters, meandering channel. Two meters of river for every meter of straight distance. A breezy day with some cumulus clouds.

I seemed to be making the right microadjustments now while rowing and didn't fishtail or end up in the reeds. Went 2 km downstream in half an hour. Finally a sign of civilization -- an ordinary power line. One km from the landing as the crow flies.

For real authentic dugout canoe adventures, visit haabjas.blogspot.com and wahurblog.blogspot.com. Have a great song festival!

Chief Niwot's curse effect'd

I've been developing an appreciation for pine forests recently in Estonia, at the same time that I've come across some depressing reading about the scale of the pine beetle infestation in Colorado and Wyoming. I spent a good part of each summer there from 2000-2003, before this thing got started. 2006 was a really bad year; now, as these things do, it is filtering into the national and international press.

A lot of times we pooh-pooh dire environmental news because it doesn't turn out to be that bad. For example, the gypsy moth epidemic in the Eastern US in the mid-1980s -- we were warned that within ten years all of the oaks could go the way of the American chestnut, which has been 99.9% wiped out (sooner or later, any sapling will catch the blight). In this case, some kind of equilibrium was regained.

In the intermountain West, though, 90-95% of the pine forests will die -- it's mind-boggling. Ironically, the linked NYT article mourns the death of the trees from the homeowner's view (it's in the Home & Garden section) almost as if the trees are some sort of feng shui element, and tries to look for a silver lining. But there's a risk of a major tipping point when so much living tissue dies. Erosion. Albedo-related issues -- if the temperature across the region rises, if rainfall patterns change, the whole landscape will change. Colorado has just amended old laws about collecting rainfall, and that's because water reserves are already getting scarce underground and on the surface. The last of the mighty glaciers are already negligible. And what happens when the very surface of the high country becomes a parched desert and no longer even condenses much dew?

There's been an attempt to link the cause of the epidemic directly to global warming as well. This bears repeating of course, and I don't doubt that the climate is getting more hospitable for cold-blooded killers such as the beetles, but I'm a little sceptical about the "lack of bitter winters" claim -- supposedly beetles are kept in check by occasional temperatures of -40. When does it get that cold, even in the high Rockies? It gets that cold only in the Yukon and the Alaskan interior, and maybe rarely in the Yellowstone area.

The main reason for the epidemic as far as I'm concerned is that the woods have become like slums -- cramped, disease-filled tinder boxes. Not because people aren't maintaining the woods like they do in Estonia park forests and heritage landscapes, but because fires are not permitted to burn. And one reason is because people, even people like Jim Robbins of the NYT, have built their dream homes there.

The other side of the river

So I bought a rubber boat to explore the river. Russian-made, I must admit -- heavy penance lies ahead. I haven't laid that sort of money down on an eastern product in years, since I bought a Belarusian bicycle that weighed about 70 or 80 pounds. There are few reasons to buy anything from there (though the beer seems to be getting better and the Norwegians can't possibly compete against canned Kamchatka salmon) but this type of watercraft (models such as Nyrok, Ivolga and Skif) appears to be a well-regarded vehicle for running brushy inland creeks and rivers. To be fair, like many Russian products, the rubber boat is rugged, anything but glamorous, but dependable. Until the rubber gets brittle, it works.

I've noticed that except for one company's website, the River Slough, 250 m behind the house, doesn't rate a mention on Estonian canoeing forums, which talks, and rightfully so, mainly about three or four rivers -- Võhandu, Ahja, Piusa and a river in northern Latvia that once or twice a year offers real whitewater. I don't know what the Slough is like most times, but in a rain-swollen year like this one, the stretch in our "backyard" is absolutely gorgeous. The water is higher than it was in April. I have to slosh for about 10 yards through shin-deep water to get to where the boat is "parked" (not moored, mind you) among clumps of marsh grass, but this can be done barefoot. No sucking mud or roots, just soft grass. The central channel is 3-10 m wide and clear. Trees are sparse and the only thing that impedes progress in any way are occasional rafts of yellow water lilies, scraping ever so lightly against the boat bottom. I don't know, maybe it's actually fairly plain Jane, but it is enjoyable, and the deerflies and mosquitoes are tame.

The floodplain is broad and the river makes many S-curves, almost doubling back on itself in places. I was hoping to use the river as a way of crossing a road and getting to a lake about a kilometre upstream, maybe ferrying the kids there, etc. It turned out a couple days ago that there IS a navigable box culvert under the road (it was so well-hidden in the brush that I might have driven past it for years without noticing it), but the main and only channel led me to the point on the road I already knew about -- a drainage pipe. Most of the river has simply decided to go left, through the pipe.

Another thing is that it took longer than I expected to get up to the road. With all the curves, probably half an hour. I decided to leave the boat there and walk back to the house for lunch -- and also mark the "landing", which I should have done in the first place, given that the riverbanks are uninhabited and there are no landmarks.

After I retrieved the boat, I must have made good time going downstream, because I didn't notice any yellow tape and overshot the "landing" anyway. I might have kept on going all the way to Kahkva, about 3 km by air, if I hadn't seen a relatively high bank -- the first solid land right on the river. I retraced but still couldn't tell where I was. I could always go back upstream to the road, but there had been a downpour and the boat had deflated from the temperature change, making it exhausting to row. So the intrepid river explorer called his wife on the mobile phone and had her shout at the top of her lungs through the woods...

**

The next expedition was father and son, like the canoe rides on the Virginia lake. The boat seemed better-balanced. We just went about 200 m, around the S-curve to the high bank I had seen earlier. Amazing how different the forest is on the other side of the river. We have spruce and birch with an acre of wild strawberries in the clearcut behind the sauna on the way down to the river. Wild strawberries hiding in the tall grass next to the driveway. But on this side, a well-maintained private forest, nothing but tall pines, with just blueberries and cowberries and wall-to-wall moss carpeting in the understory. And one lone wild strawberry.