As much as I've always enjoyed calendar autumns - the disappearing of excessive light and the dissipation of the numbing heat, the amazement of wearing clothes again - just as much I have always hated the mental autumn, the idea that slowly but inevitably, everything around us starts to wither and die, and that there is nothing I can do about it.

The magnitude of this annihilation falls heavy on me, every year. In this annulment, progress gets too deeply buried – but not quite.

That year, the fall fell to a full halt in one long and incessant, unscrupulous slide, starting right here, with the taking of this picture. The smell of the void is already there, you can almost feel the land standing still inside of it in the thin and limpid air, timidly waiting for the permafrost. Golden birds have flown home, the only movement left is the darting of the clouds – the passage of days, swift as arrows.

So, you may imagine my astonishment when I found the tree – in Google Maps. Without the tree I would have never, ever been able to place the picture on the map, not even close – I would have put it much further south, away from Ylläs. But then again, this is wide angle. This is with many calendar autumns passed.

View to the west towards Ylläs from Lainiotie 301.