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Contacts: hiking guide, mindfulness instructor, emotional and awareness skills coach Anne Laine tel. +358 44 558 6127. www.infontes.fi laineanne@gmail.com

For more information, contact: +358 44 271 60 95, info@kareliacottages.fi, Suursaarentie 95, FI-82310 Oravisalo, www.kareliacottages.com

Contact information: Timitrantie 3, 81700 Lieksa, tel: +358 44 333 4044 e-mail: timitra@timitra.fi

For more information take contact: Suvi Räisänen tel. +358 40 531 1290

The wind rules in daylight and, blowing through the water, it changes its smooth surface.

It swishes through the leaves making trees creaking and snapping under its irreducible power.

Now the ice has melted and the water is free to run along the hills creating different sounds: it sometimes drips slowly and constantly, it sometimes seethes and bubbles in its bed with renewed strength.

In the meanwhile, some little inhabitants of the forest work continuously to build up their nests and provide food: millions of crunching ants can be heard only by people who really are willing to listen to them.

As the sun goes down, the blowing wind becomes softer and milder and it leaves the stage to make space to the final concert.

In Koli the tweeting of birds fills the spring with gentle melodies and when the night comes to Elontila, just close your eyes and let this song come in your dreams.

Only the clock on the wall ticks. Now we can hear it. The ticking reminds about time. But softly. The rhythm does not sound regular but like an old man being absorbed in his own thoughts when walking, hobbling. With the same rhythm our simultaneous presences in the shared same atmosphere keep running away. Our presences must be very different. Still we need time to prepare ourselves to exit the door away from this journey towards less and less. It is evident that nobody wants to burst the bubble. Let the silence first pass by.

During our visit to the Erä-Eero deep in the wilderness of Lieksa, the spring was still so early that the silence of the forest was real. There was only sound of the wind and branches rustling. A single bird takes off somewhere in the distance.

Eero had built us a beautiful secluded shelter which was like from fairy tale book. There I was going to spend my first night outdoors. In the front of shelter there was a camp fire made from three long tree trunks. It was soothing to listen to sounds of fire, even in mean while it puffed smoke. During the evening, Eero told stories about the forest while nature completely slowed down and darkness fell around us.

Sleeping outdoors is not exactly the easiest things, but during the coldest times of the night, I heard the host stood up and stoked the fire. It felt good when the heat spread under the shelter. Waking up in the morning was nice to listen to bird sounds, they sounded like bubbling boil water in a teapot. And there is nothing tastier than campfire coffee and pancakes with strawberry jam for breakfast.

‘A Walk in Progress’ tells a story of my walking during the art residency at Kolin Ryynänen December 2011-January 2012.

It was in Koli that walking became such an essential part of my art practice. Each of my many walks was unique though a route would often be repeated. I would see the landscape afresh depending on the weather, starting point, time of day and changes in the seasons. I have no preferred vantage point in Koli, no fixed or favourite view.

When walking I rarely walked at the same pace with my eyes fixed ahead: Walking allows the eyes and the imagination to wander. I imagined an artwork that could accommodate this sense of movement, the zooming in and panning out, the notion of time passing as much as the time spent walking. The drawings became a succession of vignettes marking the shifts and changes in the landscape seamlessly linking together to make a continuous whole, as if a film spliced and edited. By filming the drawings I intend to further  the sense of movement and meandering.

The journey continues: I have begun a series of ‘Walks in Progress’ and am currently working on a 5th.