Rainbow in the Akerselva river

I took this video last month on one of my weekend walking tours along the Akerselva river. A lovely autumn day, the rushing water of the river, the spray dancing above the water, catching the sunlight, and suddenly--a rainbow. A lot of people were taking photos of the river that day. Enjoy........

Autumn comes to Oslo

The beauty of the Akerselva river in winter

Two short videos taken on Sunday January 22nd 2012 when I was out early in the morning walking along the Akerselva river. The first one shows the mallard ducks swimming in the icy river--you've got to love these birds. I love watching them. As I often say, birds rule. The second video shows the waterfall near Hønsa Lovisas house and the ice buildup and formations at the base of the falls. Pretty cool looking. I have always been fascinated by rivers in winter--especially when they freeze, either fully or partially. I remember back to my teenage days when I took pictures of the Hudson River (in Tarrytown, New York) that had almost frozen over. It was like watching a land of ice come to life. Very solitary, very beautiful.

The turbulent Akerselva River---25 September 2011

We usually take a long walk up along the Akerselva river on Sunday afternoons. This is something we often do during the different seasons, but it is an especially lovely trip during the autumn months when the foliage is starting to turn colors. Oslo has had a record amount of rainfall during late August and most of September, and the Akerselva water levels are quite high now. The river is quite turbulent, especially in the areas where there are waterfalls. One of them is located near the Hønse Lovisa house which is in the vicinity of where we live, and this is where I took a lot of photos and video footage. It was so exhilarating to watch the water churning and bouncing along on its way to the Oslo fjord, creating a spray that reached all the way up to where I was standing with my camera. Normally the river is not as turbulent as seen in these videos, so it was exciting to witness it and to capture it on film. I did a lot of filming yesterday afternoon and evening, and I thought I'd share some of videos with you. This river has become very special to me, and I film it during all seasons. Enjoy the videos, and if you have any comments or feedback, let me know. I am new to the video game, but will probably be making more of them, because it's fun.......

Changing the world

It sometimes seems to me as though the apocalypse is coming, in one form or another, and perhaps it is best not to know how it will occur—earthquake, tsunami, meteor hitting the earth, droughts, fires, floods—there could be many different scenarios. It didn’t help to hear today that the nuclear crisis in Fukushima Japan has been upgraded to Chernobyl status. I wonder how much more Japan can take. How much is too much before a country collapses? I look at what we are doing to our planet in addition to the natural disasters that occur, courtesy of Mother Nature, and we don’t need to add our man-made disasters to the natural ones. I need only think of the chlorine poisoning of the Akerselva River to remind me that carelessness abounds and that many disasters are man-made, and that animal life suffers at our hands. The world has witnessed recent oil spills and the tragic loss of animal and fish life. We really need to start re-thinking our priorities. I think there is so much that is topsy-turvy in the world, average ordinary people know it, and they know or sense that some monumental change is coming, because this unlimited greed and consumption and utter indifference to anything other than a huge paycheck cannot continue. God knows what that will be--perhaps a huge worldwide revolution against greed and inhumanity and lack of concern for the planet, or a return to a simpler way of life, more agrarian, less industrialized, less money-oriented, and less competitive. I’d be all for it.

It’s hard not to feel drained by the way we are living our lives now, and very tiring to hear that nothing can change because this is ‘just the way the world is’—full of greed, competition, unscrupulousness, lack of empathy (for people and for animals), carelessness, indifference, and hatred. I know there are good average ordinary people in the world, because I know a lot of them and I am one myself. But the people in power are the ones who worry me. The Wall Street moguls are the ones who worry me. And why I ask do we need Wall Street? Really, why do we? Why can’t we start by dismantling Wall Street? I applaud Michael Moore in his recent film Capitalism: A Love Story, for trying to make a citizen’s arrest of Wall Street denizens at the end of the film. Of course you laugh or smile when you see him do that, but you know too that he is serious, even though he is making a point. There is no real work done on Wall Street from the standpoint of actually producing viable products. And when did it become cool to buy warrants and derivatives in the hope that a company will do poorly so that you can earn money on the possibility of its failure? I just don’t get the world these days. Literally everything has to do with money, all business and political decisions seem to be guided solely by the prospect of making money. It’s boring. It’s become a non-creative world that is slowly sinking into a quagmire. And perhaps the best thing is to let it sink so that it can be replaced by a better world—one in which people in power care about the planet and the lands they live in, one in which money isn’t the be-all and the end-all of everything .

A short update about the Akerselva River

I attended a scientific seminar this morning having to do with how to restore life to a dead river, specifically the Akerselva River in this instance. It was called ’Kan kunnskap hjelpe Akerselva’, which translated to English literally means ’Can knowledge help the Akerselva’. It was sponsored by The Ministry of the Environment http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/md.html?id=668. It was a well-attended seminar, which was heartening. The Minister of the Environment and International Development, Erik Solheim, opened the seminar and meant that after several weeks of sorrow and mourning for the river that died, it was time to work together to bring the river back to life. And that was why his department had decided to tap the knowledge of those who know rivers—scientists who have spent their entire careers studying them, gathering data on what happens when pollution and chemical spills destroy river life. There were five speakers, who also participated in a question and answer session with the audience afterward. Their individual talks were good and quite informative, and I must say that I gained a lot of new information as well as some new ways of looking at rivers. One of the speakers reminded us that we have to look at rivers from a three-dimensional perspective and that was useful information. It made me understand that the Akerselva River will come back stronger than ever. I left the seminar somewhat optimistic. Despite the massive death of fish and river bottom life, there was some encouraging news. Some of the salmon eggs that had been buried deeper down in the gravel at the river’s bottom had actually survived the chlorine spill. That was good news and a good way to start a new week.   

Nowhere to run to

And so it happened again, a major earthquake that generated a devastating tsunami—this time off the coast of northeast Japan. The horrific images of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that rolled in over Thailand and Indonesia are still vivid in my memory. This quake in Japan was a major one—a magnitude of 8.9 on the Richter scale is being reported, and that is scary enough. Just as disturbing are the video footages of the tsunami sweeping across coastal farmland carrying boats, cars and burning houses in its wake. Other videos show submerged cars and boats being pushed toward a highway overpass, and it is both terrifying and amazing to see how boat masts are just crushed like plastic toys. I watch such scenes and cannot help but think of the Mayan prophecy that says that the world will end in 2012 (more precisely, the Mayan calendar ends on the Gregorian calendar date of December 21, 2012 which has led to intense speculation about what this means for the planet). And if you have seen the film 2012 (not very good except for the special effects for earthquake scenes and subsequent destruction) you will understand that there really is nowhere to run when these types of things happen, because there is usually very little warning. I am glad that we do not live in a geographical area that is prone to earthquakes. My thoughts go to the Japanese people—I hope and pray that there will not be a huge loss of life as there was in Indonesia.

The power and fury of nature and of water never cease to amaze me. I just wrote about the Akerselva river and how its fish and insect life died in the space of one night due to a chemical spill. But the river itself keeps running down to the sea and hopefully always will. Back in November 2000, unusually large amounts of rainfall in Oslo resulted in extremely high water levels in the Akerselva that threatened to flood surrounding areas. We live about a five-minutes’ walk from the river, at a point where there are small waterfalls. When we opened our apartment windows facing toward the river, we could hear the river as it roared past. We joined many others who stood watching from a safe distance as this ordinarily peaceful river roared mightily past us. The spray from these falls was so intense as to take your breath away. I have never seen so many people out late in the evening, watching the river, photographing and filming its wildness. We are drawn to that which scares us. We watch even though we don’t want to. Even in the current video footage from Japan, there are motorists on the highway overpass who got out of their cars to see what was going on, in spite of the huge danger. I would like to think that I would have floored my car and sped off. But who knows, perhaps it was smartest to stay on the overpass bridge. It seemed to be made of solid cement and to be able to withstand the onslaught of the ocean water, and it was not submerged, at least not at the time point that the video footage was shot. I hope so anyway. The tanker truck that stopped on the bridge remained there. Perhaps the driver understood that there was nowhere to go. That must be the scariest thought of all—that there is nowhere to go, nowhere to run to. The digital age, with the ability to send live footage in the space of a few seconds via iPhones and cell phones generally has brought with it the possibility of literally stepping into another person’s shoes, for better or for worse. We know how they must feel. We see how horrific it is and know what they face. Nowhere to run to—a sobering thought that pulls us out of ourselves for some minutes and makes us see what is happening elsewhere. We are forced to face our mortality. And it is not war but nature that does this to us. 

The night the Akerselva River died

“Nesten alt liv er borte i Akerselva”—this was the front page headline in this morning’s edition of the Aftenposten newspaper. It translates as follows: ‘nearly all life is gone in the Akerselva river’. Apparently one of the pipes in the Oslo water purification plant up in Maridalsvannet developed a crack Tuesday evening of last week that was not discovered until early Wednesday morning. By that time, about 12 hours later, 6000 liters of highly-concentrated chlorine had leaked out into the river and taken the lives of most of the fish, crayfish, and river insects along the river’s approximately six-mile length. Scientists who have evaluated the river during the past week have found no signs of life. River life was annihilated in the space of one night. These are the kinds of headlines that make me want to scream and cry. Scream in frustration and cry from heartbreak. I simply cannot understand how such accidents can happen in 2011, and yet they do. There will be a police investigation and blame will be placed somewhere, but it will not bring back the fish and the other life that died without ever knowing what hit them. I only hope that the many mallard ducks that live along the river, even in the wintertime, are unaffected. I really don’t think I could take knowing that their numbers were also decimated. I feel so sorry for the fish and the other life that died before they had a chance to live out their short lives on this earth, and also for the ducks, because all these wonderful creatures are completely at the mercy of humans. I feel sorry for us too, the humans who love this river, who walk along it in all seasons, marveling at the ducks who tackle the ice and snow and cold, hardy birds that show us that it is possible to survive these winters. I never tire of watching the ducks and the bird life in general along the river. But it’s hard to imagine that the ducks or any of the other birds will stay without food in the river. I dread the thought of what the river will look and sound like in the summertime—empty, lifeless, dead, silent.

What happened to the Akerselva river last week is a tragedy. Our lives go on, but a beautiful living river died in the space of one night. Scientists say that it will take two to three years before the river comes alive again. But right now, all I can focus on is the loss--the immense loss of life. We are not doing our jobs as caretakers of this earth when we let animals and birds die due to chemical spills, oil spills and pollution. They cannot talk, cannot tell us what they need, and cannot tell us that they are sick or dying. So we need to pay attention to them. We need to interpret for them; we need to ‘see’ them, to see how valuable their lives are. We need to ‘see’ so many things. We have to start living as though our lives depended upon the happiness of the lives we have been charged with protecting. Because the reality is that our happiness does depend on this. Without animals, birds, fish and plants, we are nothing. They may provide food for us, but mostly they provide beauty and another way of looking at the world, a better way. They remind us that all life is precious and should be respected. They are a constant reminder that all life is sacred.  


(Some links to Norwegian news articles about this environmental tragedy:
http://www.dagbladet.no/2011/03/08/nyheter/innenriks/miljo/akerselva/forurensing/15728369/
http://mobil.aftenposten.no/article.htm?articleId=4048980
http://mobil.aftenposten.no/a.mob?i=4050464&p=aftenposten)

http://www.newsinenglish.no/2011/03/09/catastrophe-hits-historic-river/

Winter scenes in Oslo

Akerselva river 

Deserted in winter--St. Hanshaugen park cafe

Benches in St. Hanshaugen park

An update on my blog from the Nyack News & Views in New York State

My blog post 'A Tale of Two Rivers', published on July 17th of this year, has been written about in the online Nyack News & Views. Their short article is entitled 'As Others See Us: From Hudson to Herring' and can be found at the following link http://www.nyacknewsandviews.com/2010/07/aosu_hudson_herring/.

I was very pleased and excited to see this, as I really enjoyed writing this particular post. 

A Tale of Two Rivers

There are two rivers that have wound their way into my mind and heart over the years---the first is the Hudson River in New York State where I grew up and the other is the Akerselva in Oslo Norway where I live now. Both are beautiful rivers that wind their way through city, town and countryside alike. The Hudson River, over 300 miles long, starts in upstate New York at Lake Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondack Mountains and ends in the Upper New York Bay, which is the New York harbor area between New York City and New Jersey. The river narrows at some points, other times widening so that you could believe it was more like the narrow part of an ocean than a river. The Akerselva river flows through the city of Oslo, having started its journey at Maridalsvannet in the forest area north of Oslo. It empties into the Oslo fjord. Compared to the Hudson River, it is not a long river at all, only about five miles long.

The town I grew up in, Tarrytown, is one of the small towns located on the Hudson River. The Tappan Zee Bridge crosses the river at this point, connecting Tarrytown with Nyack at one of the widest parts of the river. The bridge is a landmark like the George Washington Bridge. On a clear day, you can see the George Washington Bridge and the New York City skyline from the Tappan Zee Bridge. The river has been known to freeze in the wintertime, although it does not do so each year. I can remember my father talking about this happening when he was a child (he grew up in Tarrytown) and how the townspeople could walk all the way across the river to Nyack if they wanted to. I remember when I was around sixteen or seventeen, the river partially froze that winter and I was able to take some really nice pictures of it. It was amazing to see how the ice was pushed up in some places like small icebergs. I don’t remember it freezing much after that. There was always a lot of activity on the river—barges, tugboats, pleasure boats, cruise ferries to Bear Mountain and West Point—all on their way to upstate NY or back to Manhattan. I remember as a child being out in a very small motorboat together with my uncle and my family; it was not a pleasant experience because the boat was too small, we had to sit completely still, and none of us had life vests on even though they were probably there in the boat. Looking back on it, it seems so foolhardy to have done that. Yet knowing my stubborn uncle, he probably insisted to the point where my parents gave in rather unwillingly. It never happened again. During the summertime when we were children, my mother would take us and some friends to Kingsland Point Park on the river, where we would make a day of it swimming, picnicking and lying on the beach to get a tan. It was also interesting to watch the male lifeguards flirt with the teenager girls and I always wondered what became of some of those people. Did those summer flirts lead to romance and a future together? As we and our friends got older, we hung out at Rockwood Hall State Park on the Hudson River, which was the former estate of William Rockefeller given to NY State by the Rockefeller family. Part of the local folklore would have it that it was haunted in places by the spirits of the Indians who used to live there. I can remember being there with my sister and a good friend early one evening, walking around, and suddenly experiencing the feeling that there was something else there with us—an electricity in the air, a feeling, a coldness. We did not hang around there very long after that. It was an odd experience because we all felt it at the same time, and we had not been talking about spirits or any such thing when it happened. In the autumn, if you looked across the river, the Hudson Palisades were always there in the distance. They were not real mountains, rather more like steep cliffs falling down to the water, but in the autumn the leaves on the hundreds of trees on the cliffs would turn beautiful colors, so it was incredible to look across the river and see that foliage. When I come back to NY now, usually during the summer months, I often stay with my friend Jean who lives upstate. For the past four or five years now, we have been attending the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison, which is held on the Boscobel Estate (http://www.boscobel.org/main.html), also overlooking the Hudson River. It is a fantastic experience to sit in the audience tent and watch the actors and actresses run about on the sweeping estate lawns, making their entrances and exits. The plays usually start when it is still light out, but then darkness descends, and the stage lights illuminating the tent come on, giving the place an eerie-like glow that is usually quite in keeping with the tone of the play at that time, whether it be comedy or tragedy. In other towns along the Hudson, such as Irvington, Dobbs Ferry, Hastings, and Riverdale, to name a few, the waterfronts have been developed so that there are now lots of different restaurants and shops to visit. It was not like this when we were children. The waterfronts were often shabby, old, dotted with factories (with many broken windows), garbage areas, small marinas, rundown buildings and weary-looking men hanging about them—in short, they were not very appealing places to walk around in or look at. I remember taking the train from Tarrytown to Manhattan when I went to school there, and it was always interesting and sometimes disconcerting to look out the windows at the life along the river. The town waterfronts look very different now, all changed, and mostly for the better in my opinion. Of course it is now almost impossible to afford an apartment in the newly-built complexes on the river, so this is the flip side of the coin of improvement and development. When I am back in NY, I still enjoy taking the train ride from Manhattan to Tarrytown or Irvington—it is a beautiful ride that always makes me feel like I am coming home. If you want a book that presents the Hudson River in all its glory during all the seasons, I recommend The Hudson River: From the Tear of the Clouds to Manhattan (http://www.amazon.com/Hudson-River-Tear-Clouds-Manhattan/dp/1580931723) by Jake Rajs. Some of his photography is breathtaking.

The Akerselva river is not a long river as I mentioned earlier. Nonetheless, it weaves and winds its way through some lovely scenery and areas of Oslo. It is a people-friendly river, with bicycle and pedestrian paths that allow one to follow it all the way up to Maridalvannet and all the way down to the fjord. If you walk north along the river, you will come to Nydalen, which is a complex of apartment buildings, shops and businesses that blend in nicely with the river and its small waterfalls. I often think how nice it would be to work for one of those companies that have buildings there—one could sit out along the river and eat lunch during the summertime. The Nydalen subway station boasts an escalator ride down to or up from the train platform that will enchant you—the escalator ride, called the Tunnel of Light, envelopes you in a rainbow of colors that change and glide into each other accompanied by a kind of mood music that creates a truly memorable experience (http://performative.wordpress.com/2007/01/21/tunnel-of-light-nydalen-metro-station-oslo/). There are many people picnicking in the parks along the river in the summertime. If you walk south along the river, you will pass some idyllic spots perfect for taking pictures. You will also come upon a part of the river where salmon and trout swim upstream—we have stood from the bridge and watched them flopping about and trying to swim up the waterfalls. We don’t really know how far up the river they actually manage to swim. The city of Oslo has used some money to renovate formerly rundown areas along the river, and these now are populated by restaurants and galleries and coffee shops—again a change for the better in my opinion. I have taken numerous photos of the Akerselva river during all four seasons and I never tire of photographing it. I always seem to find new idyllic areas that I have not photographed before. The Akerselva river has now become a part of my life in much the same way as the Hudson River—captivating me with its beauty, hidden spots, bird life and constancy.