Good thing I went for a walk yesterday while the sun was shining because today is freezing: grey, rainy and occasionally snowing. It’s supposed to be like this all day. Yesterday afternoon I asked Anders if he wanted to go for a walk and he said yes and we left about 3 pm with me saying that I wanted to walk at least 20 minutes.
There are no good places to walk, really, in our village. It’s all paved for the most part, with only one gravel dirt path (the snail trail) unless you head to the outskirts. Karin and I have done a couple of the 5ks on the dirt road that goes north from our neighborhood up through farmland for exactly 2.5 kilometers before reaching a paved road, but it’s a really boring stretch to walk. Anders and I headed south instead, through the heart of the village, and across the main road to what is affectionately known as Americabackarna (the American hills). I have NO idea why it’s called that. It’s not my fault, I swear. They were called that before I moved here. 😀
I just looked at Google maps and lo and behold there is a horse farm/stables/breeder named Amerika right smack on the west side of the area, so now I have an answer! Although to be honest, I’m not sure which came first. That farm, when we first moved to Flyinge, was an OSTRICH farm.
Americabacken consists of many fields, pastures and undeveloped land from the south side of the village down to the Kävlinge river. It has a decently-sized open pine grove in the center, and the ground is mostly sand under a thin layer of grasses. Occasionally in the summer there are cows grazing there, so there are stiles and fences around those pastures when they’re in use, though people are still allowed to walk in them. Along the north side there are a few thin rows of houses, the soccer fields and an outdoor daycare that has been there for about 10 years, but which Karin recently informed me is now closing due to lack of kids and resources. The east side is along the road that goes from Flyinge through Flyinge KungsgÃ¥rd (where all the horse stuff is) to Södra Sandby.
Anders and I walked as far south as we could, over the grassy dunes, and through the fence stiles until we reached a fence stretched along the south side, still quite a ways from the river though we could see the water. We walked along the fence, and then turned and walked back north, with the soccer fields to our left. It was chilly but nice enough in the sun and we were moving at a pretty good pace. I had to keep an eye on the ground in front of me, though, as it’s very uneven and there are unexpected holes…burrows, I suppose, every once in awhile. The wind brought the sound of voices to us and we saw a couple of people walking dogs coming our way. “Hej,” we greeted them, and received the obligatory “hej” and head nods in return. Anders saw a bumblebee.
Once we got back to the main road, we crossed it and turned left into our old neighborhood, walking nearly down to the house we used to live in for not quite 5 years. We don’t go past the front of that house very often and the back of it, which is on the main road, is blocked from sight by a high wall. It’s kind of weird to think we lived there at all, honestly, though that’s the house where we lived when Karin was born. The pocket-size front yard was completely paved over and 2 cars were parked in it, as well as one in the actual driveway next to it. We turned before we reached the house and walked a zigzag through the neighborhood, eventually ending up back at one of the main roads and then swinging back around to take the snail trail towards the school.
Everything is budding, but there still isn’t a lot of greenery. There are the beginnings of buds everywhere. A fringe of green lined both sides of the snail trail and the stream that runs through it smelled very organic: rotting moss and wood and mud. We passed through a cloud of bugs and I waved my arms around as I walked trying to get them to disperse. They weren’t as small as gnats nor as annoying as mosquitoes but they stuck with us until we came out of the trees and turned behind the school. We could see horses, covered in horse jackets, grazing out in the fields that belong to the farm and stables that are directly behind our house.
I noticed, while we were walking through the small woods that line the snail trail, that there were no crows or crows’ nests anymore, high up in the trees. In fact, we saw only two nests…a tiny one and one that certainly belonged to something much bigger, like the crows or ravens. There used to be masses of them in the trees along the snail trail and the county sent out a gunman once in awhile to keep the population of crows down. As we came around the curve behind the school, where there is another small grove on the edge of our neighborhood, we could see that all the crows and ravens (and rooks, I think) had apparently moved there instead. There were several tall trees stuffed with huge bird’s nests and plenty of the big black birds wheeling and cawing and flapping at the tops of them. They are very noisy neighbors.
Anders was keeping track on his watch and when we reached the house, it turned out we had been walking for 50 minutes: 3 kilometers!
Later, we picked up sushi and went and had dinner at Karin’s place in Lund with her and Nelly and then hung out for a bit before we came home. It was just falling dark as we drove down the road into Flyinge, the streetlights shining from up high in lightened circles along the pavement. We’ve lived in this village for 24 years, and every time, as we drive past the sign with the village name on it, I think “almost home!”