Flying over the ice

The ice rushes by under your feet. The ice is clear as glass. Here and there you pass a thin crack that shows that the ice is 30 or 40 cm thick, perhaps even half a metre. Beneath your feet you see the cold, black water. The sun, too weary to climb far into the heavens, reflects its rays on the ice. All you hear is the rush of the wind as you fly along and the rhythm of your steel blades as they cut the ice.

It takes a while to learn the technique of long-distance skating. Beginners are too tense, it is hard work skating if you have to struggle for every metre. But you learn. And once you get the hang of it, the skating takes care of itself. All you really have to do is to shift the weight of your body from one leg to the other. It's like flying! The skates become wings that "lift" you off the ice. Well, that's perhaps making it sound a bit too easy. Unexpected gusts of wind, sudden squalls, headwinds, weak or cracked ice and blisters on your heels are also part of reality.

But today, everything's perfect. We have left our stress behind and are filled with happiness and tranquillity.

We glide across the great, open bay - just ten kilometres from the city centre. Six short months ago we sailed our boat here - hot, sunny days when the wind was still and we cooled ourselves down in the waves gurgling over the softly rounded slabs of rock. Now the temperature has dropped forty degrees Celsius.

But the sun still warms us a little as we sit down on the shore to open our rucksacks and take out the hot coffee and sandwiches. This is one of the best parts of the excursion. And now we have the time to enjoy the fantastic snow-scapes around us, with their sparkling, rounded shapes against the clear blue sky. The whole landscape has frozen into a gigantic sculpture of snow, ice and conifer treetops.

The tracks in the snow show us who has been here before us. The tracks of the long-tailed field-mice wind back and forth, but suddenly disappear under the deep snow that protects their nests against the worst of the cold. A family of minks has made its home in a crevice in the rock. The mink, which could previously only be found on fur farms in Sweden, has escaped and run wild, and is now a common sight near the water's edge. To the ire of many, as the mink is a voracious and skilled hunter that loves to feast on birds, fish and shellfish. But at this time of year it must be hard to find food. The ice is impenetrable, and it will be many weeks before there are any birds' nests with eggs or fledglings. Perhaps it eats the mice? The tracks outside the little cave tell us there's a lot of lively activity going on, at any rate.

But it's hard to keep warm if you sit still. Time to think about the return journey. We've learnt by our mistakes, and this time we've skated into the wind on the outward leg of our trip. This means we won't be lured too far from home, and we'll have a tail wind on our way back. And we need the help, because once we get through the door, we feel that we wouldn't have been able to manage another metre.

But it's a pleasant fatigue. And tomorrow it will have been transformed into new energy.