Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Three Falls

This post is from Ann Arbor. But what did you expect? The name of the blog is Doubling Places, Ann Arbor – Helsinki – Reykjavík. And now you know that it's cyclic. After Reykjavík there is Ann Arbor again. Then Helsinki will be next and after that Reykjavík again.

While I have been travelling west it seems I've also been travelling backwards in the weather time. As a result I've seen three falls this year. Or rather I want to say three ruskas. Ruska is a Finnish word meaning the time when all the leaves change into fall colours. Here's a fall picture series travelling backwards in real time.






















The Michigan Fall is warm, sunny and bright with colour. This is from Ann Arbor, taken today only a couple of hours ago. The building is the Angell Hall and you'll recognize the Ann Arbor street lamp.






















The Icelandic Fall is stormy, rainy and windy with quickly travelling grey clouds. This is from Þórsmörk about a month ago. There had just been a big storm a couple of days ago so most of the leaves were already gone.






















The Finnish Fall is cold and crisp with wet sidewalks and darkening nights. This is from Helsinki in late September and it's sporting the national tree, birch.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is there a word for "ruska" in English?

About the word "ruska": apparently in many languages it means "Russian". I don't think the Finnish "ruska" comes from "Russian" (it may come from Russia, though). I do not know the ethymology of the word, but I would guess it derives from "ruskea" (brown).

Ðommí Únðosson