The gauges on the choppers panel tells me that we are flying at a height of 5000 feet and with a speed of 120 knots. Heading is north. The clouds under us forms a thick, white carpet and in the headphones i can follow the radio traffic from the Sundsvall air traffic control. That is far away, they cant help us now as we are trying to find a hole in the cloud cover.

Finally the pilot sees the chance and forces the chopper into a steep nose dive. Through a small hole in the cover we go down several hundred feet very quickly. In a minute we are flying over a rocky landscape that resembles nothing I have seen on earth before. Rocks, huge grey rocks everywhere hardly enough space to walk between them. No trees, no bushes, no grass, only small patches of lichen here and there.

We speed over this moonlandscape for a few minutes then suddenly the earth beneath us drops away so fast that I feel a strong mixture of dizzyness and fear wave through my body, and a moment later we are flying high above the most beautyfull valley I have ever seen. The clouds are gone and the sun shines over a great blue lake, surrounded by streams, creeks and waterfalls, that cuts through a rough, rocky landscape mixed with small heather, dwarfbirch wood, small lakes, swamps and bare ground.

The mixture of colors, differences in heights, the huge rock formations and the distant white, snowcovered mountain-tops together with the feeling from the choppers rapid loss of height makes me bewildered, high, stoned, all at the same time. This is it! This is the ultimate wilderness, formed by nature and untouched by human influence. It is the escape to freedom, silence, solitariness and, unless you are respectfull and humble towards it, the path to your grave.

When the chopper hits the ground I am sobered up by the pilot who wants us to take our equipment and our dogs and get out fast. He is anxious to get back to base as long as the sight conditions farther south permits. When the last noise from the chopper has dissapered, we find our way to the small cottage that is going to be our home for the following week. We install our self and prepare a delicious dinner, washed down with plenty of wine, make plans for the next day and can't help from sitting up late chatting, laughing and studying maps. This is life!

Next morning we wake up too late, the sun in already heating the ground, making the scent conditions difficult. After a fast breakfast for us and the dogs, we head toward a distant mountain top. The dogs, two young setter bitches, one irish of norwegian, irish and american bloodlines and one english from swedish, norweigan and american bloodlines, are eager. They are constantly investigating the scent the fair breeze brings to their olfactory organs, walking to heel like race horses a few seconds before the start signal. They are the most loveable dogs socially but when out in the wilderness they are stubborn and difficult to handle.

When we have past throught the dwarf birch wood we let them go. They rocket straight out, one after another, chaseing each other in a childish way that makes me blow a sharp whistle signal and throw my right hand straight out. That sobers the white setter up and she casts of sharply to the right and continues in an effective, flowing gallop that makes her midbody look montionless while her front and hind legs works her forward with a tremendous speed, undependent of the irregularities of the ground she covers.

A few seconds later she has dissapeared behind a hillside and she is gone. I give up the idea of blowing her back and look for the red setter instead. Its handler has directed it to the left but now it is turning in a direction right in front of us, serveral hundred yards away. It is heading upwind towards a wet swamp, head high, in a slightly restricted gallop. It must have scented birds! It reaches the swamp, slows down further and casts back to the left, hesitates and turns, powering up its speed and then in a fraction of a second, just at the edge of the swamp, a point!

We hurry up to the dark, copper red statye with vibrating muscles, the hair on the red tail slightly waveing in the wind, head at the height of the back and its eyes upon a grassy hillock near the edge of the water. The point seems steady and we take the time to throw of our rucksacks before we load the guns and steal closely upon the dog. When we are ready the red setters handler gives a short, sharp command resulting in a dog that boltes forward toward the birds. A fraction of a second later the scene is a total chaos of white winged, cackeling young grouse, gunshots, two birds turnes into white clouds of feathers, shouts to an unsteady dog and the wingbeats of the birds.

Then, as suddenly as the situation came up it is gone. Silence surrounds us, the guns get their breath, the dog sits in the middle of fhe grass and stares exited in the direction the birds flew into. When we have recovered our dignity we reload our guns and the dog is commanded to investigate the area for remaining birds. It makes a quick search and gets a new point! Advance is commanded and the dog bolts forward but stopps quickly and looks confused. Unexperienced as it is, it has pointed one of the shot and dead birds. It is given the "featch" command and with some difficulty it brings the dead grouse to us. The dog is given a new direction and a new command in order to make it collect the other shot bird but no! It is too young to understand that more than one bird can fall to the ground from one point. We try several times but the dog looks confused and doesn't understand. During these manouveres the white setter has arrived to the scene. It understands a "fetch" command better and goes without hesitation in the direction it has got from me. Soon it has brought the second bird into the security of the game bag.

Half an hour later the white setter has got a point. We hurry up to it but it advances and flushes a single bird up in the air and follows it happily, compleatly ignoring my whistle. Finaly I loose controll of my self and shout: "FOXY, You goddamn, lousy pile of shit, come HERE!" A few seconds later I here the eco of my own voice bounching from the hill side and I understand that my voice wil be heard for miles in this terrain. But it turns the dog and it comes back to me, cheerfully waving its tail. I continue to tell it what a kind of worthless horses crop it is and when it finally lays down on its back with its feet in the air, I give up an give it the "go" command again. The dog bounches up and speed to the left up on a hill side. She doesn't turn back before she is more than a quarter of a mile away and this time she crosses my path about 100 yards in front of me.

Again she dissapears down the slope to the rignt and when she hasn't been seen for several minutes we turn right to look for her. There i snoting to be seen! An empty hillside with some low bushes of oisier but no dog. I blow the whistle several times and finally she comes from our backside. She is increadibly independent and I understand that this will be an interesting week in more than one way...

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