Uncle Henry´s Universe.

This year´s Coupe Icare, the 46th edition, was dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci. It is 500 years since he died, this absolute genius of all times, who has meant an incredible amount for the development of human flying.

The church in Saint-Hilaire-du-Touvet had a fantastic exhibition with copies of his very early models for aircraft. As early as the middle of the 1400s, he sketched on the ornithopter that would allow man to fly like birds.

There is almost nothing more spectacular, innovative, acrobatic, and off- the-charts in terms of ultra-light air sports than the programme of the Coupe Icare. The Parabatix sky racers stands for speed and acrobatics in its playful competition, all kinds of madness combine in Icarnaval (where Leonardo and his creations of course were frequently used this year) and the children stand for play and creator joy when they build pinweels, kites, gliders or birdhouses. Hot air balloons, different types of aircraft, delta wings, birds of prey, music and street shows… There was something for everyone!

Like every year since 1974, The Coupe Icare have been held at the joint site of Saint-Hilaire-du-Touvet / Lumbin, in the heart of the Isère Alps between the Chartreuse mountain range and Grésivaudan Valley. It is not-to-be-missed. It is an amazing on-going 4-day show that attracts about 100,000 visitors over 4 days each year.

Live in the present, do not wait until tomorrow; pick the roses of life today… (Pierre de Ronsard)

We are too tired after the day’s experiences at Coupe Icare in Saint Hilaire du Touvet and not hungry enough for a restaurant visit. A pizza slice, a ripe tomato from the neighborhood shop and cold beer in a plastic mug. A happy ending to an inspiring day.

The evening is lukewarm, weak winds play along Rue Gabriel Peri; we are at our favorite hotel in Grenoble. Sometimes the laughter rises from the outdoor seating where the regulars gather, the black cat with harness and leash catches the attention for a while, everyone wants to cuddle.

The moon strokes along the eaves, a dove chirping in his sleep. Life is good! We pick a rose and fall asleep to the suggestive sounds of street life through the half-open window.

Since Alice Cooper wrote on his Facebook page that he would like to walk through Tilas Stoll, the nature reserve suddenly became a much hotter tourist destination!

Today we have a little over 200 nature reserves in our county Värmland. Högbergsfältet is one of them. It was founded in 1979 and is a mining area near Lake Yngen. Tilas Stoll is a mining corridor leading into the Krakbo mine. For security reasons it has been closed for a few years but is now open to visitors.

Go there! It is a strong experience, well worth a try.

Woke up this morning to 5 minus degrees and frost. Fresh! Lovely. Season change, new hopes, new dreams.

I really enjoy the changes of the seasons, it’s a favor, a gift! How boring it would be with the same season and weather all year round.

Thin ice on the garden pond. Crispy. Silent. Now the bird bath is soon out for the farm’s tomtits, it is only a few weeks since the last frog was silenced. Nature begins to pave for a long winter, it feels as if it’s coming early this year.

Now we have a colorful time before winter really arrives and embeds everything in white quilt.

This spring I was convinced that 2019 would be a record year for the golden eagles in our area, and maybe it was, but without our knowledge…

In other parts of the country, the golden eagle breeding seems to have been successful, in some county even new record.

All the eagle pairs in our area showed signs of wanting to nest, but when we later visited the nesting sites we knew, most nest were empty. Some had collapsed during the winter but since eagles usually have alternative nesting there is rarely any problem. The problem is for us to find these nests!

Although the golden eagle is a big bird and they build very large nest, it is remarkably difficult to find them. The eagle is very discreet around the nest and an alternative nest can be located more than 5 km from another. The eagle territory in our area are often around 30 square kilometers, so there will be extensive forest areas to look through.

In our oldest golden eagle territory, which I have inventoried for 19 years, it was successful nesting this year too. It´s an old couple who often manage to breed chicks. Whether it´s been the same eagles all the time is hard to say, but I think so. They can get quite old. Our oldest eagle was probably at least 32 years old.

Often eagles only succeed in breeding every two years, but this pair often succeeds two years in a row. Here the results was the same as last year. A kid lay dead under the nest and a large and powerful one was ringed.

Later in the summer a colleague found a new alternative eagle nest and a kid so in summary, at least two eagle nesting´s succeeded this year.

Over the years I have spent quite a bit of time with sleeping wolves. Both in the wild and in zoos. A great benefit I received both through work in various game projects and through own studies. It’s an experience I treat everyone who likes wolves. It gives peace and tranquility to the soul and provides useful time for reflection. Genuine quality time!

In the nineties I worked with a transmitter-supplied female wolf that became almost world famous, at least in Sweden. Of the locals she got the name – Ylva. She is probably still the wolf that has the greatest place in my heart, a fantastic personality that gave me several unique experiences during the years we got together.

After several unsuccessful attempts to anaesthetize the wolf and replace her transmitter, which was extremely important because our project was dependent on it functioning, I examined the possibility of sneaking at her when she sleeps.
Something that most people considered to be crazy and totally meaningless
because wolves are so incredibly vigilant and shy animals.

The morning of 5 june 1991 I got my chance. The radio signal revealed that the wolf slept in the middle of a small marsh, she had been at rest for some hour and only lifted her head a few times to check that everything was calm in the surroundings. I approached very carefully, moving a toe at a time… at least figuratively speaking. Every meter I advanced got to take a lot of time. When after an hour I had the wolf lying just 17 meters away, it was enough. I had more than proven that it could be possible to access her in this way.

Sitting on a marsh a summer morning with a deeply sleeping wild wolf next door was a strange experience. Suggestive and present at the same time. The wolf had made herself a soft and comfortable sleeping pit deeply submerged in the bog, the only thing I saw of her was a little fur and the right ear.

I expected that she would at any time notice my presence and rush from the place, but the minutes went by and nothing happened. In the end I started to worry. She didn’t move, had she died? I started talking a little low … no reaction. I raised the voice … no reaction. In the end, I coughed dry, like the wolf’s warning sound, and a fraction of a second later, I looked straight into the eyes of a very new awake wolf. (she didn’t even comb herself)

a fraction of a second later she rushed off and first stopped about a hundred meter away to look at me again and probably ask herself, what the hell happened…

Together with an extremely skilled shooter and colleague, we succeeded later that summer, on the third attempt, to sneaking us on the wolf as she slept, anaesthetize her and replace the transmitter.

I’m a bad
blogger. The ambition is to blog regularly, but the reality has turned out to
be something completely different. Days pass, weeks pass, even months disappear
before I have plotted something new on the blog. Unfortunately, that is the
grim truth. I do not know if it helps to promise fine and improvement but here
at least a summary of what has happened since last …

The winter
wolf tracking was not what I expected. Not so many wolves to track, mostly a
tiring search along poor forest roads. There were thousands of km in car,
terribly boring! I was hoping for puppies in Kockohonka territory but found
none. Just before Christmas, I tracked the alpha pair that crossed the border
and disappeared into Norway. The next contact with the alpha male was right
after the Christmas holidays and then on a new site 30 km to the south, far
from Kockohonka territory. There he went with a new female. What happened
between 18 and 27 December, we will probably never know.

Even
between the lynx tracks it was sparsely. Found no female with young, only a few
solitary lynxes.

The royal
eagle work in the spring, however, became a more positive experience. Very good
weather and good success with the work means that with excitement, I look
forward to several visits to eagle’s nests at the end of the month. Just don’t
hope that the cold weather we have right now, with rain, north wind and wet
snow, is causing problems.

At the end
of February, we took a week off and visited Madeira. It can be recommended!
Nice climate, very sympathetic people and an exciting nature. Walking along the
island’s “levadas” is a balm for the soul. Maybe I write a little more about
the week’s experiences in blog post in the future.

In April,
it suddenly became early summer! 20-25 degrees and lukewarm south winds. Nature
literally exploded with greenery, before winter was suddenly back in early May,
with snow, hail and freezing temperatures. We at least enjoyed the weather as
long as it lasted and got time with this year’s first kayak trip on mirror-shiny
water.

So, now I’m
catching up. New ambitions, new goal…

Although I
prefer wilderness in front of urban sites, there are some capitals that go
directly to my heart, Dublin is one of them. With its mild coastal climate, it
is a nice destination even in the winter. We were there a January week, a few
years ago.

The hotel
was a little worn, the bathroom door couldn’t close, the view not directly
captivating and a ice-pail on the table next to our table, caught the
water dripping from the ceiling in the breakfast room … Charming! The hotel
was simple but at the same time very affordable! There was nice reception and
central location. We loved it!

It is
impossible to miss where the dark stout Guinness comes from, it characterizes
the whole city. Are ubiquitous. A heavenly kingdom for those who appreciate the
drink as the undersigned does. If you visit Dublin, you must not miss the Guinness Storehouse. A fantastic museum that tells
you everything you want to know about the iconic stout, at seven packed floors!

The city center
is no bigger than you can easily discover it on foot, but there are of course
several different companies with Hop on Hop of buses, if it is preferable. In
addition to museums, whiskey distilleries and other cultural events, there are
several fine parks. St. Stephens Green is one of them. A small oasis in the
middle of the city with lush greenery, statues, ponds and a rich bird life.
Fearless robins sing from bushes and fences.

Temple bar area is
another must. Charming district full of good pubs and restaurants. Many pubs
have live music in the evenings, an atmosphere of Ireland at its best.

Today,
Värmland has got a new nature reserve, Päggonätto, so our landscape now has 200
nature reserves! It lies furthest north in the county next to the Norwegian
border and is an extensive marsh area located on a height plateau about 600
msl. An exciting wilderness where you have the chance to experience both golden
eagles, willow grouse and siberian jay. In winter, you will often find tracks
of three of the big predators, wolves, lynx and wolverine.

Finnish
names in the area as; Havda, Hojka, Pottmäk and Rajsk suggest that burn-beating
had previously occurred in the area, perhaps once the marshland was used for
mowing. In that case, they had miles of view during work, north of the Trysil
mountain and other mountain masses.

On the
eastern slope of Pottmäk, around the old Nygårdssätern (mountain pasture),
older lush spruce forest grows with large elements of deciduous trees. This
part of the area has an unusually rich flora. Parts of the old manor houses can
be found inside the forest.

The border
between Sweden and Norway is a clear delimitation of the reserve in the north.

It has been
a long time since forest workers lived in remote huts in the forest. Nature
recovers what man has previously created, moss beds softly in tired forest
workers’ beds. A ragged gable on a rotten dwelling, an eye up to the vault of
the sky.

Barentsburg (Баренцбург) is a Russian mining town, 55 km west of Longyearbyen
in Svalbard. The company town was founded as a Dutch mining town in the 1920s
but was sold in 1932 to the Soviet Union. Today, about 400 people live here,
most of them with roots from Ukraine.

The village
is a mixture of old mining houses, industrial premises associated with the coal
mine, and much more modern buildings.

The local
guide, who in English with clear Russian accent seems to enjoy scaring the shit
out of American tourists, is an otherwise happy and jovial person who with
great knowledge and empathy tells about life in the village. He is only forced
to silence at times, when a fully loaded mine truck with a deafening roar is
pounding by. The stories feel Russian, the atmosphere feels Russian. The house,
which was solemnly marked with 1958, was built in 1952 … but the carpenters
did not find number two, so they took the figure that felt most like it, it had
to become an eight instead. Wonderfully!

Red Bear
Pub & Brewery is located on the main street in Barentsburg. For a long time,
it was the world’s northernmost brewery, but when Longyearbyen opened its
brewery, they became, with very little margin, the world second-most
northernmost … The brewery manufactures its beer on pure glacier water and
is, according to the guide, fantastic quality, a must try. If any of us were
craving for stronger drinks, the pub also had it, but he strongly advised not
to try their local special drink, called; “see you tomorrow”