August 14, 2016.  Since I’ve written about Ullevålseter in winter and spring, I thought I’d take some time to praise its summer splendors — because every season brings surprises.  The trek to this old-farmstead-now-hiker’s-haven is one of our favorite jaunts.  Not only because of the gorgeous forests, wetlands, and pastures we pass through along the way, but also because we always start our jaunt from the front porch of the picturesque Frognerseteren Restaurant, which offers a heart-stopping view of the Oslo fjord (and some yummy trail food if you haven’t stocked up beforehand).  

Frognerseteren is a great launch point for exploring the Nordmarka forest that surrounds much of Oslo.  And it’s easy and quick to get to; it’s the last stop on the T-bane metro Line #1 and is only a 35-minute ride west from Sentral Stasjon.  If you’re visiting Oslo and have a half-day for a hike, this is the one to take.  It gives you the perfect smattering of typical Nordic habitats, vistas, and rustic log cabins, plus you’ll feel like a native rather than a tourist, as you’ll be rubbing shoulders mostly with other Norwegians.

From Frognerseteren, you can choose from several different paths varying in size from narrow hiking and mountain-biking trails to wide skiing routes that all lead to Ullevålseter’s adorable farmhouse café.  (Food destinations are always a big motivator for our hiking trips.)  And if you’re so inclined, you can continue along the trail to lovely Sognsvann Lake, where you’d catch the T-bane Line #6 back into town, easy-peasy.

The entire Frognerseteren – Ullevålseter – Sognsvann loop is only about seven miles, not counting any off-trail explorations.  And the total hiking time is around three hours, unless you dawdle a lot for photos and food like we do.  Check out the trail here, and zoom in to see Ullevålseter and other features of the hike.  Or to learn more about Frognerseteren Restaurant and Sognsvann Lake, take a look at my post, A Walk at Sognsvann.

I’ll admit that this time, when we first started off on our trek to Ullevålseter, we were experiencing a fit of the dismals due to some rough stuff life has tossed at us lately.  But by the end of the trail, nature had done its job, restoring our joy and making us realize what a wonderful place the world can be.  So with this in mind, rather than giving you the play-by-play as I’ve done in previous posts, I’ll focus on what really stood out during the hike:  the sensory experience.

Take a look at some photo galleries and my stream-of-consciousness ramblings on what your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, feet and fingertips will enjoy along the trail.

Sights:
Every pasture sports pink and yellow wildflowers, clearly the most fashionable colors this season.  Larger-than-life bumble bees drunkenly nuzzle blossoms while butterflies dance a mad fandango in the rare sunshine.  Masses of mosses wave huge, banana-pepper-shaped pods in the breeze; they remind me of South African soccer fans with their vuvuzelas.  Granite boulders surface like whales from a forest floor covered in blueberry bushes that have been frost burnt to a deep red from the recent cold snap.  Giant black slugs munch sleepily on toxic red-n-white Christmas mushrooms, then leave behind their slime trails as testaments to their bravery.

The “Comma” butterfly (Polygonia c-album) belongs to the “Angelwing” family, so called for their frilly airfoils. A splotchy, backwards “C” splattered across the dull underside of its wings resembles bird droppings, which helps camouflage the butterfly from predators and gives it the name “Comma.” (Sorry, I don’t have a pic of this — these little suckers are fast and super fluttery!)

Wonder if slugs get high from eating the hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom?

Check out the big, furry, seed pods from this mountain lupine! Some of these fronds reach almost to my shoulders.

The bumble bees in Norway are absolutely colossal and have incredible coloring. There are 35 species in all, 6 of which are endangered due to the hive collapse issue that seems to be plaguing all bees right now. This big boy (Bombus pascuorum sparreanus) is feeding on a Melancholy Thistle (Cirsium heterophyllum).

Thar he blows! Looks like Matthew is about to become lunch for Moby Dick, a whale of a piece of granite.

Pink and yellow are all the rage this season for wildflowers. This beauty is called Moth Mullein (Verbascum blattaria) because its pink centers have fuzzy orange stamens that look like moths’ antennae.

A male Common Brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni) feeds on an Alpine Hawkweed (Hieracium alpinum L). This species is one of the longest lived butterflies, surviving for up to 13 months!

Not sure what kind of moss this is, but I love the yellow spore pods each stem waves. Don’t they look like vuvuzela-sporting spectators at a South African soccer match? (South Africa’s team jerseys are green and gold, BTW.)

Sounds:
A chattering stream keeps us company along the trailside.  I’m startled by the kerplunk of equally surprised frogs as they cannonball into a forest pond for safety.  A thrumming rat-a-tat-tat tells us that a tommy-gunned woodpecker has targeted his victims hidden in nearby deadwood.  Tiny mosquitoes whisper in my ear, “ooh, pardon me, so sorry to bump into you.”  They’re plentiful but puny; not large enough to break the skin.  Trilling songbirds on their way south sing the Stark family motto: “winter is coming.”  The thunk of our heels tells me the earth is hollow here, a thin drumhead of dirt stretched over granite.  Peat moss and pine needles cling for dear life to an enormous hunk of black stone that slumbers just below the surface.  When this rocky giant awakens and sloughs off such a poor excuse for soil, I expect to hear the sound a dog makes when it shakes water off its back.

The Nordmarka forest north of Oslo is laced with incredibly picturesque lakes, ponds, and streams dug by glaciers and glacial runoff. The water is quite dark and tannic from all the leaf litter and sphagnum accumulation. Only the occasional splash of jumping fish or frogs disturbs the almost eerie stillness of forest pools.

Most of Norway seems to be built on a thick layer of granite, upon which sits a thin layer of silty, peaty soil. I’m surprised that such tall trees can find enough soil to stay upright. Walking on the shallow ground sounds like beating on a bass drum muffled with a wet towel.

A Common Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) sings from his perch in the late summer sun. Not much longer and he’ll be on his way south to warmer climes. Each spring, he teaches the boys in his brood his distinctive song (there are regional dialects, just like in Norwegian.) Males use the tune to lure the ladies.

Burbling brooks make the dark forests seem more cheerful. Their copper color comes from all the tannic acids leaching out of birch leaves, pine needles, and decaying mosses.

Smells:
Drying hay, pollen-laden wildflowers, pine sap heating up in the sunshine, and dusty trail dirt — the scents of late summer.  Beneath the trees I smell dank basement, my grandma’s root cellar, the blue clay we used in my high-school pottery class.  My nose twitches as the tang of wild dill drifts by; I search but never find it.  The acrid odor of sphagnum moss explains why I keep thinking of the Hoh Rainforest in Washington State.  Granite, both wet and dry, gives off the citified smell of concrete.  A weird whiff of urine wafts up from three-foot-tall stacks of pine needles. These towers are condos for colonies of wood ants, and the smells reminds me why they’re sometimes called “piss ants.”

Wood ants (formica rufa group) form colonies that build huge nests made of piled-up pine needles. They’re one of many ant species whose bodies contain large amounts of formic acid, which smells like a cross between formaldehyde, Pine Sol, urine, and vinegar. That ammonia odor is why they’re sometimes called “piss ants.” And you’ll smell it especially when you squish an ant … or if they decide to spray it at you from glands in their abdomen (it’s a defense tactic when their nest is disturbed.)

Nothing like the smell of summer sunshine heating up pine needles and ripe blueberries. The forest floor is covered with these bushes, which glisten red from a recent cold snap.

Look closely, and you’ll see lots of sphagnum moss and other bog plants coating the ground. Bogs form when glaciers dig potholes that fill with rainwater. Clay deposits leftover by the glaciers often line these potholes and keep them watertight. These undrained puddles provide prime conditions for growing sphagnum and duckweed, which actually help filter the water and keep it so acidic that it’s exceptionally clean (despite what the dank odor suggests).

I love the smell of hot rock baking in the sun. The path here is so well trod by mountain bikers, hikers and skiers that the granite just a foot below the soil’s surface has been exposed.

Touch:
Who could imagine wringing out five ounces of water from one handful of moss?  After much experimentation, I determine that marsh boardwalks offer better bounce for your buck than any trampoline or diving board.  Running my fingertips along the stems of pond plants, I find the tell-tale, triangular shape of a sedge.  As I trip for the 500th time on giant tree roots that splay outward rather than downward, I notice how much they look like my grandpa’s gnarled hands.  A painful prick and squish between my thumb and forefinger reminds me that I’ve got to get one of those blueberry combs the Norwegians carry.  I push the old Ullevålseter farmstead’s turnstile to see if it still works and am rewarded with a splinter in my palm; serves me right for snooping.  Sitting on a lakeside rock, I wonder, “are my pants damp, or just cold?”  The pores tighten on my face in response to the sun’s heat, making me ponder whether I can skip taking my vitamin-D tab tonight.

Remember the old saying, “Sedges have edges, rushes are round, grasses have nodes right down to the ground?” I did the touch test — these are sedges.

The soil is so shallow that a conifer’s roots must crawl far across the ground to anchor the tree adequately. The roots sure make great tripping hazards.

Looks like we’ve committed a murder in the woods. No, we didn’t reenact a scene from a Jo Nesbø crime novel. It’s just juice from all the raspberries and blueberries we picked.

This Norwegian lady models how to use a blueberry comb and avoid the unsightly staining.

The old turnstile and fenceline still stand at Ullevålseter.

Tastes:
The pop and gush of raspberries in my mouth seems smaller but sweeter than last year’s.  Same for the blueberries, tinier but less tart.  Is the size/taste ratio a sign of a snowier season to come?  Or does it just mean that somebody has gotten here before us and picked all the biggest berries?  The plasticky taste of water stored in a bottle warmed by sunshine and body heat makes me wish for my old-school lunchbox’s glass thermos.  A green crabapple plucked from an abandoned orchard dries my mouth to a pucker with its alkalinity.  Ulvalseter’s tomatoey goulash topped off with cream-covered apple crisp and a nutty cup of caffeine rounds out the hike’s flavors.  And finally, the fruits of our labor get mixed into some good ol’ homemade dishes, imbuing them with an earthy wildness that they never had back home in Chicago.

Okay, so it looks a little like blackened fish, but it’s actually salmon coated with blueberry-lemon sauce. I also made some homemade lemon-mint tea with herbs from my garden.

I had enough blueberries left over to make blueberry-oatmeal muffins.

We also got a sizable stash of raspberries, which I made into lemon-raspberry soufflé.

No better place for some sunshine and a cuppa … or a beer.