Easy walking..?

[Hoy]

The landscape here seems flat and easy walkable. But don't be deceived!
If you follow the old paths - people have walked here for several thousend years - it is no great task.
Here you head due west, an important trade route between west and east crossed these plains.

[Hoy]

It is lots of small, often shallow, tarns, ponds and mires but you can't walk across them!

[Hoy]

The white is easy to walk - lichen.
The blue is heavy stuff - up to your waist in different willows (Salix glauca, S. lanata, S. lapponum)
The yellow-green is wet and soggy with grasses and sedges.
The green can be easy or heavy - to your ankles or knees or hips in juniper (Juniperus communis) and dwarf birch (Betula nana). It is often wise to walk around if you can!

[McDonough]

The terrain and views are so wide open and expansive!  Terrain-crossing-management by color... most interesting.  Do you know there is a whole computer GIS (Geographic Information Systems) technology out there that interprets aerial photography based on ground vegetation, from Clark University here in Massachusetts, the expensive software is called Idrisi.

http://www.clarklabs.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDRISI

[Hoy]

I have heard of GIS, yes, and I think I have heard of IDRISI too.
I know they use different tools to analyse the color of woods compared with the health of the trees and also the color of the sea and different kinds of features and conditions of the sea.

If I continue my hike I get to higher altitudes. Here it is not much plant life except lichens. I meet patches of permanent snow cover. If this snow cover is stable for years it is called a "fonn" (usually the smaller ones) or a "bre" (= glacier). The glacier moves, the "fonn" don't.
Glaciers and "fenner" (pl of "fonn") have receded the last years. You can see the very white rocks were no lichens has developed yet, they used to be snow-covered all the year round.

[Hoy]

Want to make a rock garden? Start here!