Sea Kayaking in Gräsö, Sweden

Summer retrospect #5: Sea-kayak trip around Gräsö, Uppland, Sweden. At some point towards the end of our magnificent weekend trip, Malin asked: “Now, would that be worth an entry on your blog?”. Yes, Malin, absolutely, I said. Just that it took a few month to publish, but that’s another story (not that complicated of a story, I just never took the ten minutes to upload a small selection of the photos and the nine minutes to write those few words; but, you know, there’s always something else to do).

Reasons why it’s worth a blog entry include:

• A weekend of cloudless autumn skies, enjoyed on the open Baltic sea, occasionally splashing its mildly-salted water in our endlessly peaceful faces
• The sheer calmness and “remoteness” of the whole endeavour; To start paddling, we first drove to a mildly populated little village, took the ferry over to an even scarcer populated island (Gräsö ), where we drove to the point where the road disappeared into the sea, where we got picked up by a tiny boat that brought us to the next island from where we finally started paddling. That’s how remote it was!
• The possibility of actually going for swims, in Sweden, in September, in the sea, and not freeze!
• A one-of-a-kind sunset, motivating us all to search for our spirit animal and then try to mimic it, silhouetted.
• A campfire
• (a campfire alone should be reason for a blog entry those days)
• A mild late-summer night spend on one of a million empty and uninhabited islands
• An unbelievable night-sky, and thousands of distant stars doubling in number by being perfectly mirrored on the calm, dark surface of the sea in the bay.
• (This point is simply to emphasize the above point, which was unbelievable)
• CALMNESS, in absolute terms
• The absence of mosquitos (which is a very real plus if one wanders around the little island, closely observing the rims of dried-out ponds; literally, you won’t believe the death toll …)
• The joyful exploration of empty islands, see if there are treasures hidden, and outlooks that reminded me of seeing pigme-Lofoten
• The hoisting of a flag, which was actually a t-shirt, but saying ‘LIVE SIMPLY’
• For the great company of friends. What a weekend.

Malin, here’s the blog entry. In sweet memory.

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