AWARENESS

A simple equation...

If we take more than we give - there will be a deficit.
If we take as much as we give - there will be an equilibrium.
If we take less than we give - there will be a surplus.

I don't find it very strange that the world seems to suffer from a deficiency of energy. When I say energy I don't meen moving electrones - I meen things like love, peace, happiness, understanding and carefulness. Both among people and between man and nature.
The world suffers from deficiency in so many ways. At different levels also.
I'm thinking about, for example...

The natural resources which are running empty.
The resources that still are available which are unequally distributed.
The lack of care and understanding.
The wars that kills. The destruction.
The hate. The fear.

For me, these are nothing but symptoms of deficiency. And for me it's also clear that the reason for this shortage is that too many of us is taking more than what we are giving. The big problem, from my point of view, is that we either are not conscious about this or that we are - but we simply don't care. I like to think that man is good at heart, so my guess and hope is that our consciousness is not big enough to grasp it or bright enough to cast a light on it... yet?

Even an incurable optimist like myself have to realize that no man alone can change the world. Thinking about how we are billions of people on Earth it's easy to see that we would have to be a helluva group to be able to make a drastic and quick change. What we CAN do is not bad though. Not at all. Because what we can do is hopefully what is going to change it all, slowly but surely.





The solution is very easily said. We just have to change the equation to bring us to a surplus. There is three ways to do this; take less, give more or BOTH take less and give more. The last option is clearly the most effective one. Easily said, yes, but is it easily done? Take less and give more... This may sound abstract and hard to grasp, but I think that it is all quite concrete. I can come to think of many ways in daily life to put this thought into reality.

Examples of taking less can be to stop spreading negative energy around us. Stop excessive spending. Stop supporting destruction of nature. Choose eco-friendly (instead of all those EGO-friendly) products...

Giving more is even easier I think. Spead positive energy. Help other people. Do good things for our nature... There are so many ways to do this, and all we can do is to simply do our best. This will not bring a dramatic change in just some days, months or even years, but there will be changes for the better and eventually we are going to notice them.

We can't expect the equation to turn to a surplus right away, meaning that the world will be overfilled with positive energy. What we can expect though is a smaller deficit, a less severe lack of positive energy. Eventually, if we would keep on moving in this direction - giving more and taking less - there will be an equilibrium, when we will experience no deficit but no surplus. Stability. Harmony. That would be a really great thing, thinking of how it is today. The pressure on us and on our nature would diminish...

If we could get to that point one day, and from there continue to give more and take less, we would maybe be able to reach a state where the world would be overflowing of love and care. I love to imagine that. That would be heaven on Earth. People would give so much to eachother that no one would have to be afraid or alone. We human beings would care for our nature and other living beings. Our nature would eventually recover from the damages and be able to offer us its resources again. We would again be giving our care back to nature.

In the circle of life. The way it is supposed to be.

I love you nature!

Been some busy days lately, but I have had some time to be outside anyway. I have never seen this much animals before, escpecially deers. I've seen no less than four types of deers; roe deer, moose/elk, reindeer and red deer.

I met a little frog too. Just outside my house. It was very dry so I carried it to the water and that seemed to make it a happy little frog.



Moose (Alces alces)



Common frog (Rana temporaria)



A little tribute to mother nature :)

The ice is melting away...

But I decided that it was okay to walk close to land. The water is really shallow there so the ice is still thick enough. It was nice nice nice nice nice. Ice ice ice.


Aliyah is the fastest and Gizmo is always some steps behind


           



Wheee!



Ally's back on steady ground



Miss Gizmo von Big-Mouth

It was a very nice evening yesterday...

I went outside with the dogs and I equipped myself with the camera. I was not looking for anything special, but I ended up seeing some animals I didn't expected to see. I think I saw nearly ten different species, but I only catched three of them on photo.

---

A list of some of the animals I saw:

European Roe Deer (Capreolus capreolus)
Muskrat or Musquash (Ondatra zibethicus) √
Swan (Cygnus olor or Cygnus cygnus) √
Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata)
Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) √

( √ = on photo )

---

European Roe Deer

I actually got pretty close to the deers but a good piece of advice is to NOT bring a couple of clumsy, loudly panting Bullterriers along when you're trying to photograph wild animals. Just when I had just a little bit left before I could take a photo of the deers, my two friends stumbled over some dry branches and the deers took of quicker than quick. Well, maybe next time. I'm about to get myself a new lens to the camera, a zoom lens. That way I don't need to get up close to the animals to get good photos of them. It's not fun to scare the animals off.



Here is the best photo of the deers, taken a few days ago


This is all I got yesterday, a photo of their hoof prints

---

Muskrat

I'm not really sure what this animal is and I've never seen one before, but my guess is that it's a Muskrat. I did not see it at first. I was taking a photo of the scenery and then I saw it swimming there, near the edge of the river. It disappeared under water but after several minutes it appeared again.

---

Swans

I could not ger near these guys, but anyway. There were eight of them, four pairs I guess. Like a double double date. I think that it's fascinating and sweet that pairs of swans stay together year after year.



Four swans to the left and four to the right

---

Common Kestrel

Last year I found that a pair of kestrels was living in a pine tree on my backyard. They hatched some chickens too last summer. Very cute little birds. Now they are back and I'm happy for that.

Last evening they sat in their pine tree, the female down in the nest and the male on top of the tree, and they were talking to eachother. Ki ki ki ki. The male had a little darker voice than the female. I wonder what they said?



The male kestrel



The male again, flying

It's a nature reserve and has been since 1947. It says that this forest is a native forest, meaning that it has never been touched by man at all, but that is not really true. It's true though that it has escaped the kind of large-scale devestation that most other forests has been exposed to.

My plan was to walk around this forest, look at plants and animals and take some photos. The problem was that I had kind of forgotten that the summer isn't here yet. Even though the temperature was high, the snow was still very deep in the shadows of the forest. I had to understand that it was not possible for me to walk there. Okay okay, but this will be a later project for me!



This sign says "native forest"



This one tells a bit about the nature reserve area

---

As I continued on my way home I stopped at a place where I saw some big boulders. I thought I would go and have a quick look for snakes. The snake I was looking for is called Vipera berus and is a member of the family Viperidae. This snake is one of the three naturally occuring species in Scandinavia, and it's also the only venomous one. These snakes spend their winter in cavities in the ground or in heaps of stones or twigs. In springtime they come out again. At this time they like to hang around on top of these big boulders and warm up their bodies in the sun.

Today I didn't see any snakes, but tomorrow I'm going to a place where I know they use to be. I'm taking the camera with me, so hopefully I will be able to show some photos tomorrow!

I did see one animal though - a butterfly! I don't really know why, but we had a strange relationship with eachother. At first I was trying to come near to take a photo, but then I got attacked. It actually got a bit intimidating, but I tried to defend myself with my camera.



The result of my attempt to defence

Anyway, after this the butterfly seemed to change its mind and didn't try to attack me anymore. Maybe this attack thing was just like a ritual? I was very releived. Were we friends now? I think so, because I was even allowed to come near and take a couple of (real) photos of it...








A friend of mine looked it up in a book and found that this little guy belongs to the species Nymphalis antiopa which is a member of the family Nymphalidae.

Here's a couple of other photos I took when I was in the territory of the butterfly. Trees, trees and... trees!