NATURE
A Trip from Stave Lake to Wolverine Mountain
About going for walks in nature and seeing, listening and bringing with you impressions and good memories to remember for a long time.
A photo story from a trip in Malvikmarka in Trøndelag (Norway) — where, when and how.
Thoughts about the best in life — some words and impressions from someone who likes to take pictures and write a little about walks in nature.
On a beautiful Sunday in the middle of May, I decide, a little late in the day, to go for a walk I have thought about a bit, from Stavsjøen (the Stave Lake) to Jervfjellet (Wolverine Mountain). I have found that the trip is approx. 10.2 km one way, and according to www.ut.no, a slightly longer trip with a starting point in Hommelvik will take about 4 hours round trip.
I start by bike from the parking lot at Abrahallen, for a little more than the first kilometer inland there is a good gravel road.
When I get to the end of the gravel road, the hiking trail turns into a bumpy tractor road, then a forest path and a section of wet bog where planks have been laid out on the ground. I place the bike next to a pine tree and lock it to the pine trunk.
As I walk like this and take in the impressions from the landscape around me, I think that I am privileged to be able to walk here and enjoy the silence, the visual impressions and the warmth of the sun that I feel towards my face. And I think I’m lucky to be able to take pictures from the trip with me home and see and experience the trip again.
The light trail continues south along the light trail route to Vulusjøen and Vulusjøhytta. It is partly myrtle terrain, but there has been no rain in recent weeks, so with good mountain shoes it is nice to walk in the grass and on the path.
I do not see many people who are out hiking this fine day. The first two to three kilometers from the starting point at the Stave Lake I meet maybe seven or eight people. After that, there are no more hikers to see during the next two to three hours.
I walk in peace and quiet with my thoughts to where the path divides towards Skarpåsen and towards Vulusjøen / Vulusjøhytta. Past Vulusjøhytta I enter a new gravel road, a toll road that comes from Hønstad and leads inland into the field and down to Jervskogvegen. Here is also the ski trail I use a lot in the winter, so this is familiar terrain for me.
When I walk like this out in the woods for several hours all alone, I get in a completely different way than otherwise contact with the nature I walk in, and myself.
The small and large pines, streams, vegetation, marsh landscape, the sound of my feet trampling on gravel, grass, rocks or planks give a special closeness to nature. I’m strong at the moment, I’m in the middle of something big and nice. When I look around me, it affects me in a way that I think is good to experience.
When the weather is like this day — hot and almost windless, and sun from partly cloudy skies — on a day like this it is very nice to reach the top and sit there and look out, with almost everything under me. I can have some packed lunch and drink some water. And I may think that life is fine; life is wonderful when you can sit on a mountain top, look out over all the beauty and just let time go by.
The last stretch up to where I think the mountain top is, is very steep. When I reach the plateau, it turns out that I have to walk another kilometer on the plateau, over the marshes and between the scattered pines before I reach the top called Wolverine Mountain (Jervfjellet).
On the way down again, at the top of the plateau, just before the steep descent, I met a woman who was also on a trip to Wolverine Mountain alone. She said hello to me and I said hello to her, as most hikers do. She was the last hiker I met on the trip, so one cannot say there were troublesome many people out on a trip in this landscape.
By the way, I was a little worried about the long trip back through the forest all the way back to the Stave Lake.
The picture shows the hiking area seen from above, from Wolverine Mountain. This trip was probably a little longer than I had thought when I started, so I decided to start the descent without a long break at the top.
I sometimes think about whether I get to see wild animals in the forest, but there are actually very few animals to see in the field. No moose, no deer, no fox or — yes, wolverine!
- The mountain I am going to is called Jervfjellet — Wolverine mountain, and the area is called Jervskogen — Wolverine forest. The names indicate that there have probably been — and perhaps still are — such animals here.
Apart from the water that gurgles and flows and the wind that blows in the treetops, there is almost complete silence in the landscape. The only sounds from living beings are the good sound of birds chirping and luring, because this is May, and nesting time for the living who have wings.
This was my first trip to Wolverine Mountain. From Jervskogvegen, the path up to Wolverine Mountain is clearly marked, so the path up there was easy to find. The terrain is partly steep in this part of the trip, with alternation between blue marshes and steep slopes up to the plateau where the top, Wolverine Mountain, is situated.
In a weak moment I most wanted to stop there on the plateau and say to myself that I have reached the top. But I am so made that it is very rare that I allowed myself not to go all the way up to the goal. This was also the case this Sunday.
Hiking in the summer is in many ways very different from hiking in the winter, skiing. Without snow and skiing, I have to walk all the 30,000 steps back and forth, while on skis I can save some energy by standing downhill, and downhill there is a bit of it in Malvikmarka.
Without skis, there are still several advantages, such as that I do not have to take care not to lose balance and fall, and that I can walk in peace and quiet and think my thoughts, which are always many when I go hiking in nature.
There are probably many different opinions about an outdoor area like Malvikmarka. Among other things, there may be different views on whether forest roads should be open to motorized traffic (car, motorcycle). I am probably largely in favor of sticking to the status quo and not expanding or opening up to much greater motorized traffic in the field.
Already today, there are forest roads in Malvikmarka that are open to car traffic. Among other things, you can drive a car from Trondheim, along Jonsvatnet and via Jervskogen to Hommelvik.
From Hønstad you can pay a toll of NOK 50 and drive inland in the field towards Jervskogvegen. Here you can enjoy a meal outdoors on nice days, e.g. by the delightful Erts pond, where it is arranged with benches and table.
Norwegian:
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Øivind H. Solheim — Norwegian author and nature photographer. Writes in Norwegian and in English: novels, short stories, creative short prose, poems, essays and articles. Has since 2017 published over 1100 texts on medium.com. He has published six novels, two non-fiction books and a collection of poems.
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