Fall has fallen on Oslo and I went to visit it yesterday in Nordmarka. I figured it was high time to get out to the neighborhood thicket & see what sort of thicket it is. And a thicket is it ever!

Again, a ten-minute roll on the T-bane and you walk into the woods. A 23-kilometer tour took me from Sognsvann past the bucolic Ullevålseter tourist hut (to which I’ll surely return on skis this winter), on to Bjørnholt and back by way of Gamle Nordmarksvei—the old foot trail that connected Oslo to the farms scattered throughout the northern wood, prior to the advent of the automobile—and I suppose I’ve taken in a good stretch of the mark (but only a narrow stretch; there is a whole lotta wildish land hereabouts). There’s a Boundary Waters feel to the place, with its chains of lakes and marshes, save that it’s within spittin’ distance of the city. So a few photos to mark (ahem) the arrival of autumn.

Sognsvann

Store Åklungen

Store Åklungen

Autumnal

Stien (the trail) near Aurtjern

Blueberry bramble near Aurtjern. And full yet.

The dam between Bjørnsjø (to the right) and Bjørnsjøelva (to the left) that flows through Helvete.

Skogstien

Gamle Nordmarksvei

Falling ferns

Kamphaug crossing