Winter Dawn at Pääsküla Bog

I woke up at quarter past six for no good reason and somehow just couldn’t get back to sleep. Unwilling to face a long stretch of morning alone in the living room, I impulsively decided that I would take a bus to Pääsküla Bog, a lovely walking area on the outskirts of Tallinn. It’s a well marked path crossing through forest and bog with a stream that stretches east to west. I keep seeing beautiful sunrise and sunset photographs taken from the bridge that crosses the stream. I knew I would not get a sunrise photo on this morning, as it was overcast. But still, I reasoned, as I was awake before sunrise anyway, I could take the bus to Pääsküla and find the best route to the trail and have a lovely walk in the snow, a nice contrast to the grey slush all over Tallinn.

As I got dressed, I grabbed my phone and my video camera. If I was going to do this, then, I decided, you could bloody well come with me.

Outside it is snowing heavily but I have my trusty neon pink waterproof overcoat on and how bad can it be, really?

OK, it is pretty bad but I’m now on a bus, dripping quietly amongst the early morning commuters.

Except I’m on the wrong bus. It’s an express and it is heading out of town. I’m trying to work out where it is taking me.

This is Google Maps at its finest. When I got to the bus stop, I glanced at it (in the dark, in the snow) to see the list of buses I could take and this one came up. But now that I am sitting down and actually looking at the phone, the route that Google Maps is showing is to get off this bus in four stops and then take a taxi for the rest of the way there.

Google, if I wanted to take a taxi, I wouldn’t have bothered to ask you for bus routes.

The bus took me to the other side of the same nature reserve, so I have a bit of a walk but it’s still good. It’s also very dark and a long time until sunrise. I’m not actually sure why I thought this was a good idea.

I am back at the bus stop. It’s a good thing I am early because I went completely the wrong way. Now I’m going to attempt to go the right way. It is still dark and it is still snowing.

I have found the path into the nature reserve. You can tell it isn’t the bog because the trees are too tall. It sure it pretty though.

The photographs are all taken with a slow exposure so you can’t tell that it is dark. It’s not black and after a minute of adjustment, I’m able to walk without needing any light, which is good because I didn’t bring a flashlight or torch or anything useful like that.

The ambient light bounces off the low cloud and reflects off the snow. It is eerie.

My boots crunch against the snow and I’m suddenly very aware that I am all alone in the woods in the dark.

I have found the bridge where the sunrise/sunset photographs are taken. The world is starting to get lighter around the edges but it is still forty minutes until dawn.

I take a photograph anyway.

This part of the path is actually a narrow boardwalk that leads through the wetlands. It’s hard to see where the boardwalk ends and the bog begins. My boots are full of snow.

The world is getting lighter around the edges.

The clouds do their damnedest to obscure the light of one particularly bright star but eventually they fail and the sky turns white with light and it is day.

I climb to the top of the watch tower and look over the shining white snow and the black trees; even now, the forest feels almost black-and-white, as if color is a thing to save until the brown of the melt and the green of spring.

The snow and the trees are still beautiful, of course. But the pre-dawn light was otherworldly. In comparison, the landscape seems somehow flat.

Suddenly I realise another hour has passed and I am no longer early, I’m late. Very late. I need to be home before 11 and according to Google Maps, it’s a 33-minute walk to the next bus stop and another half hour on the bus, not including waiting time. I have thirty minutes.

I decide to take Google’s earlier advice and see if I can get a taxi. Not into the middle of forest, of course, but I can see a parking lot on the map. The closest taxi is ten minutes away, so I order it to meet me there and start hiking as fast as I can.

It takes about five minutes to get to the parking lot which is blanketed in thick snow. There are cars there but they are half-buried and clearly haven’t moved in a week.

This is starting to seem like a bad idea.

I follow the road out of the forest. The taxi still en route and I can flag him down on the way before he reaches the deep snow of the parking lot.

I march along thick tracks turned icy in the night; someone has been driving here. Could a taxi drive on this? Do they have chains? The taxi driver must know whether it is safe for him to drive down here, musn’t he?

I walk faster.

This is a gratuitous shot of my beautiful pink Paul Berg overcoat, because I’m hurrying too much to take pictures of the scenery.

On the app, I can see the taxi has stopped somewhere ahead of me. Is he looking up the route or is he staring at the snowy country road and wondering who the hell would call for a taxi here? The little car icon moves towards me and I keep walking towards it until I can hear the engine.

A grey Renault slides into view.

I wave it down and a heavy set man rolls down his window and glares at me. For reasons I cannot explain, instead of “hello” or “God, I’m sorry about this,” I say “Wow, much snow.”

“Much snow? Much snow? Where do I turn? Much snow.” He keeps glaring as I climb into the back. I have twenty minutes to get home.

“I don’t know.” There was a sort of snowy junction that I passed where perhaps he could turn but I don’t really feel like I am the right person to be offering advice as to how to deal with snow.

“You don’t know,” he huffs in his thick Russian accent. He turns the car on the narrow road to try to get us out of there and I clench the side of the seat, worried we are about to drive into a ditch. The front wheels begin to spin in the deeper snow at the road’s edge.

I click my seat-belt on and sit in silence, wondering if we are stuck now, if I am going to have to pay for a tow truck to rescue us. I wonder how I am ever going to get home in time.

He mutters something under his breath and does something that seems to involve reversing and then rolling forward over and over again until we are back on the road, although sadly, we are still facing in the wrong direction. “Much snow,” he snaps again, as if it were a curse.

He drives at three miles an hour to the junction that I’d seen; there he carefully maneuvers until we are turned around. I audibly exhale in relief. He looks at me in his rear-view mirror like he’d forgotten I was there.

“It’s a good car,” he says, as if he’s offended that I ever doubted it.

“A good car and a good driver,” I say. And with that, I’m forgiven.

He asks me where I’m from. “California,” I say. “We don’t have snow there.” Yes, this is an outright lie but I’m banking on the fact that his knowledge of California is based on Baywatch.

“America,” he says, thoughtfully. I flinch at my US-centric answer, as if of course everyone should know what country California is in. Then he meets my eyes in the rear view mirror. “Los Angeles.”

“Yes, I’m from Los Angeles,” I say, confused. Was that just a really lucky guess?

“Not you, me.” He glances back at me. His mouth is covered with a mask but I can see from his eyes that he’s smiling. “I used to work in Los Angeles.”

So much for my hope that he wouldn’t know anything about California. “Really?”

“Shipping,” he says, looking thoughtful. “Los Angeles, Houston, Mobile, Savannah. I worked in many places.”

His English is clearly much better than his accent and I feel even worse about my much snow comment. “You’ve seen more of America than I have!”

“Probably,” he says. “Why are you in Estonia?”

“Visiting.” I meet his eyes in the rear-view mirror and lie again. “I’m a tourist.” There’s no way I am going to admit that I live here. I’ve been here four years and I am still an idiot.

He nods, as if he’d suspected as much. “So. Do you like our snow?”

I laugh and he laughs and then we keep laughing until we arrive at the corner by my house.

As I get out, he rolls down the window again and calls out in a perfect parody of an American accent. “You have a nice day now, you hear?”

“Spasibo,” I tell him, thank you. “You rescued me.” He nods, accepting the compliment and my over-generous tip. Everyone knows Americans over-tip; he expected it.

I glance at my watch. I have five minutes to spare.

He was worth every penny.