Heavy shower in the birch forest

The birch forest before the rain

Swedish Lapland's places got strange names. Yesterday we start from a spot kalled Nikkaluokta, and walked some 6 km inside a birch forest, in a nicely made footpath, to another place named, wait, Laddjujavri.
Well, despite the names, it was really very nice, but coming back we experienced what the english call 'heavy showers' on our shoulders, and really soaked up, so maybe needed even more weird names to name the feeling. Like e.g. Alalahtari, the village we crossed by car, being almost naked inside, and another like Ylahtiluosomething when we made the exit from the car, shoes and soaked clothes in hand, and run to the house wearing only t-shirts (that were long enough, thank god...).

Signs like this you can never dream to see  in greek footpaths

Unforgetable walk anyway.... The birch is such a literary tree, and even under the rain I could feel the fulfillement of my constant craving for nature, but this was not enough. Walking through this so well looked after landscape, I couldn't but  think to my own city, to our old walks in the mountain, in a forest that does not exist anymore. Greeting people that we crossed with the swedish word 'Hej', meaning hi, made me remember that we used to greet people when we walked with our children in the footpaths of Parnitha, just like that, with the greek word γεια, (ya) that means 'health' by the way, as if this would be for ever a familiar way to entertain ourselves. Walking in the mountains, why should it be such a big deal, such an unpermitted luxury? We let the woods burn. I visited myfavorite place 3 years after the fire, the footpath was a white line between a black landscape. The big old pines will never grow up again.
There is no hope that we can walk again in our mountain, walk for long hours under those big pines as we used to do. Not in my lifetime. We let it be destroyed and do nothing except some demonstration in Syntagma sq, because those demonstrations is the only thing we know how to do, and we believe in them as in magic. As if god himself is staying inside the Parliament and we need just to show what we want and press him to provide us... What a spoiled, hopeless people we are...