On Monday (22nd August), I suddenly found myself riding an overnight train towards the city of Rovaniemi. Actually, I had known that I would go there for quite a long time, cause I was about to head towards Lapland due to our Northern Finland course, which is all about the special characteristics of forestry in Lapland.
During the next day, we visited a sawmill, which is located in Kuusamo. Afterwards, we headed to a campsite nearby Oulanka national park, where we were going to spend few overnights in simple campsite lodges. We spent the 24th studying mires, but we also had a chance to visit one of the most famous rapids in Finland called Kiutaköngäs. The rapid itself looked pretty nice, although the water level was quite low, and we even spotted a brown trout jumping in the rapid.
On 25th, we started heading further north towards a field station of our university's forest department, which is located in Eastern Lapland nearby the village of Savukoski (well actually still 100 kms away). There's still an 8-kilometer hike on a path from an old border patrol station before you'll find the field station, so it is located pretty much away from everything. We spent the 26th doing group works about old grown natural forests, fell habitats and birdlife. On 26th, we had some spare time, so we decided to take a look on the border zone, which is only few kilometers east from the field station. The border zone is marked with yellow tapes, which are attached to a line of trees.
On 27th, I decided to hike up the highest of the nearby fells with a student friend of mine. The fell is called Sauoiva and it is located 615 meters above the sea level, which is nothing compared to the Alps, but somewhat high on the Finnish scale. The total length of our route was approx. 20 kms.
A rough overview of our route
From 28th onwards, our bus took us further north, where we spent the last days learning about the rights of Sámi people, and forest regeneration in Northern Lapland. And it happened to be rainy pretty much for the rest of our excursion, so we didn't plan to do anything special in outdoor-wise.
I've been picking mushrooms during the last and this weekend, and it most definitely seems like autumn is beginning. Although, temperatures are still quite high, but it has been more rainy, and that's when mushrooms will begin to flourish. And some golden chanterelles can still be found, although the best season for those has already pretty much gone. 
