Few years ago a long report on a big bird found injured, I can't remember whether it was an eagle owl, eagle, or something else, caught my eye. The bird was escorted across the country in a police car into the bird hospital of Heinola . The enthusiasm of harsh policemen clearly manifested in their interview as they told of a carefully prepared transfer-box and the phases of their trip. It seemed as if one's own child was hurried with heart in a kink to the ER of central hospital.

The Finnish people's love of nature is bipartite. The part and fate of forest and wood is merciless here, far more merciless than at any other corner of the world. But the people love animals - especially birds. Finns' extravagant love of bids is an interesting cultural phenomenon. No marks are counted when expensive sunflower seeds and nuts drip down to throats of titmice, greenfinches and bullfinches in every village, in several tons.

At last even the big hooknoses which were regarded with disapproval, even hatred, a decade ago, have been taken on the wide lap of this bird people. The manners of living of the great grey owl as well as several other owl species are depicted with an abundance of material in the recent "Suomen pöllöt" [" Finland's Owls"] book. From the 1930s to 1960s the great grey owl barely belonged to Finland's nesting birds. The great grey owl is tame, not avoiding of man, trails from a side of field to another at winter and touches upon courtyards. A wintry journey out of deep forests eventually ended in a bullet or shot. They survived in the wilderness of Russia, and from there they came back when their persecution turned into admiration.

The same state of affairs was for hawk owls during their periodical winter migrations from north to South Finland. During my own active years they rarely reached the south coast; before that event a trigger was pulled. They are still hunted: owl researchers trick them with mouse baits on snowy plains and put numbered rings in hairy ankles.

Undoubtedly, it took intense softening of many years, rolling-up of nature photographers, film makers, writers, and preachers. I remember my own ancient effort for the owls, an article of the owls' usefulness as a reducer of mice and moles, and another one was even about hanging bird-houses in Practical Farmer magazine which was edited by my uncle. The headline of the story didn't come easily, and the suggestions turned out to be ridiculous: "The Prince of Night and Farmer" or "Owls? The Right Hands of a Farmer". My uncle was a word-wise journalist, and in no time he made up the headline "Owl Farming Is Profitable".

Diligence pays well. The popularity of birds, and especially birds of prey, guarantees nowadays that publishers dare to invest on excellent bird books one after another. The best researchers and the most proficient writers get to write about falcons and eagles from the bottom of their hearts, and other amateurs get to compare their observations and conclusions, finger on line. In the first shock of economical depression the brake was put on a little, but now the bird people are being spoiled again.

Nature photographers in turn get their best images published - printed with excellent technique like now in "Suomen pöllöt". Titbits are a great grey owl brooding on an ant nest (p. 182) and another one in a very thin covering pose (image tag simply "Reference", p. 231) or a marvellous on-flight image of an eagle owl (p. 93). An excursionist guesses his feelings whether he had unknowingly happened to look over a narrow cleft on a snag while travelling, and sighted the staring of a big black eye (p. 175). It is, by the way, a fine invention, at last, that there is the name of the photographer, most importantly the parish of photographing, and date pressed in a fine print on captions; they are essential in order to place the image in one's own idea world. This practice must be made a custom.

When Kirjayhtymä's [the publisher] former grand volume "Suomen haukat ja kotkat" [" Finland's falcons and eagles"] was issued two years ago, I fell for its literary excellence. Of course, it had research information in ample measure, but I remember how some ornithologist brothers were peevish for an even higher level of factual knowledge. This shortcoming was soon repaired as last spring Pertti Koskimies'kaikk "Suomen ja Euroopan päiväpetolinnut" ["The Day Birds of Prey of Finland and Europe"] (from foundation of Benny Gensbol's text, WSOY 1995) was issued. Now it seems that editor-in-chief Pertti Saurola and 14 writers in all of "Suomen pöllöt" have combined the results of science and enjoyable style "permanently well".

General chapters show the anatomy of owls, joint work of physiology and manners of living, the owl species of whole Earth, owl research, preservation and nourishment. Into the bargain we get a perfect packet of knowledge on the life of voles and the newest vole research. In addition to the description of the ten domestic owl species (12-22 pages on each), there are condensed pieces of information of each species to be on the safe side (with addition of the randomly encountered barn owl and small European owl) with maps of distribution on whole Earth.

A surprising gem is Antero Järvinen's extensive research of owls on culture, art of painting, music, poetry, and folklore. Darn it that someone is actually able to know so much of Hieronymous Bosch's, Wagner's, Hugo Simberg's, or Helvi Juvonen's relation to owls! May the humanists yet come barking at the Fach-idiotism of biologists! On the other hand it's a tough call: all the historians of art and folklorists should really get this expensive owl book in their libraries.

The extensive material of banded nesting dam owls enables large family records reaching several decades, exact information on fidelity and slips, or their young getting in an owl community (which is often due few years of waiting before the release of territory). It is exciting, the material about Ural owl offspring production, compelling to make a comparison to our species. Our Laestadian unit produces 10 to 12 young but their part of the population is small, thus it has no real impact on the mean value; the major share of the population produces 0 to 3 offspring. The lifetime offspring production of Ural owl has a greater dispersion, 0 to 35 young matured enough to fly, and even greater is the part of the productive parents: only 23 % of mothers produce half of all chicks which live to learn fly. But 72 % of young Ural owls capable of flying die before mating age, when on the other hand the mortality of Finnish humans able to walk - also in Laestadian giant broods - before marital age is less than 5 %.

I really can't say what the owl book is missing. As late as spring Hannu Pietiläinen, while evaluating Koskimies's diary of day birds of prey in Linnut ("Birds") magazine, stated that the chicks of large hawk species demand only 1 - 1,5 months from their dams, but the offspring of tawny owl and Ural owl need three months of care after they leave their nests, and asked confused: "Could it be that hawk's profession is easier to learn than owl's?" Now Saurola has the answer even for this. Owls don't, completely opposite than it was thought to this day, have decisively better vision than, for example, human does. Instead, an important part of their preying tactics is an ingenious hearing system which is verbosely explained in the book. The ability to locate prey with hearing develops much slower than the ability to seek it (like hawks do) with vision.

A small remark from someone who has read his feminist lessons. Saurola tells that owls and hawks have "inverted size-difference between the genders (the female is larger that the male)". How come the word inverted? Compared to what, some other bird families? Don't they have inverted difference in size of genders if compared to owls?

Although I am myself one of the main protagonists in the issue, having been agitating both the hawk and owl research since the 1950s, I have already had time to fret about the ornithological research concentrating on hawks and owls at the expense of other schools, other bird categories are ignored. How many is researching woodcock's or bunting species' manners of living and population dynamics, or the life of the ring-dove? This autumn's conversation of science's accountability may have me, despite the partial silliness, favour again the birds of prey. We have only a few research ornithologists so it might be good if they concentrate on specific subjects on which there is no shortage of resources. The owl research really is world's top level in Finland, as Saurola proofs it with many statistics.

1995

When I read from a newspaper that Kalle Könkkölä, wheelchair's strong man, was getting the office of assistant city manager of Helsinki at the early spring, I saw a vision when I woke up in morning, at the boundary of being asleep and awake. The outer walls of Helsinki's blocks of flats were wound by ramps on which happy and daring wheelchair riders raced at a furious speed, climbing up and dashing down again from eight floor to the ground level.

Then, as I woke up, I thought that although I considered the competition for the office of city manager, the most asphaltic of asphaltic vacancies, tragicomic for especially the Green Party, I'll delightedly let Kalle Könkkölä to have the seat of power. One couldn't possibly demand him to set to work of an organic farmer or village smith. Now that darn Kalle pulls the carpet underneath from this and many other of my thoughts with his biography. Multioccupational entrepreneur actually does practise extensive gardening from his wheelchair at his summer cottage in Mäntyharju with the aid of ingenious special tools...

Könkkölä didn't get the position. My interpretation is that city officials feared the superior vigour and skill and saw a horrific vision of excellently administrated social and health care would be cleaving resources all around from other lines. This interpretation may be wrong, at least from Könkkölä's point of view. Kalle snaps physically non-handicapped in every turn: don't you think you understand, don't pity, don't over help, and in general don't be soft. I considered using words "excellent story of survival", but it won't do, Kalle will instantly knock it out: don't admire!



Well, Könkkölä's rigour is unbiased as even handicapped are getting their share, meaning those who have submitted and accepted the role of helpless.

But if I now said that Könkkölä was a whip or bully, I would do wrong. When he poses as a besserwisser, he always has solid arguments. He has absolutely no need to appeal to his past of suffering, as disheartening it is: time after time a "touch of black wing", falling down into a pit, and a hard climb back. In spite of being handicapped, Kalle Könkkölä is a thinker and psychologist who has an attraction to the problems of being human. He has an extra-ordinarily well balanced reason and emotion, he is both a logician and co-liver, and a researcher and reformer. Note Kalle, this isn't any admiration, but only a cold analyzation of your qualities.

Last spring I was in the publishing event of Könkkölä's and Saraste's book in Helsinki and afterwards at the celebration in WPK's restaurant. Heini Saraste was in a over-merry tipsy, giggling, constantly interrupting other's speaking, and was being impossible in every way. I tried to understand that the state of blissful ecstasy was due to publishing of her first book and the completion of work of several years, but doubt stole into my mind: what kind of book this pair could have produced.

This primer was pleasant for me, the surprise even greater, when I got my hands on the book. For Heini Saraste is a magnificent writer, not without errors though, but excellent, and Kalle Könkkölä is a brilliant interviewee. The text is fun, warm, and wise, happy and severe at the same time.

No biography can empty a person along all the corners of soul, not even near, and I believe that also Kalle is thinking that "I am not like that, am I" or at least: "It may have something of me, but so much is missing." Yes, what is the reality of human individual? Is it necessarily only that which a person feels and knows himself to be, or also that which close acquaintances, relatives, and friends, experience him to be? Or in some cases also the epitome how publicity experiences him to be?

In any case, Kalle Könkkölä becomes unusually close from the book's talented quick strokes. At least I was taken by the biographical part, I frankly identified with it, Kalle's phases of life since childhood when siblings dragged the crippled boy along to all places, carrying him if other methods weren't possible. My attitude is that of a very cheerful smiler's, even through the accidents and trials when I know the happy ending - until now (knock wood!).

I like the straightforwardness in which the friends and enemies alike are portrayed, called by their names and with good depictions of their personalities, or Kalle's loved ones and his love life. The attitude of society towards the handicapped is finely analyzed: for example, when the families of both parties (and the priest wedding the pair!) must take up on Kalle's marriage with another handicapped person, student of architecture Maija Elomaa.

The style is harsh at times, at some places tender, but never sweet. It is also told how Maija beat Kalle in the head with a book when Kalle had been a bad and lazy writer - even when fingers occasionally had enough pressing strength to hold a pen.

Maija Könkkölä is, of course, the most essential one of the important subordinate characters of the book - not in the background by any means, but by side. With an evenly good reason one could make an inspiring biography of Maija Könkkölä, within whose collection of ailments lives an uncredibly vigorous powerhouse and social opinion leader; just now it was Kalle's turn.

Rest of the book is excitingly wise pondering on being human. Through the problematics of handicappedness, the book goes all the way to further explore the problematics of whole life which concerns every reader subjectively. One reads about relationships, charity, conceit, self-esteem and the identity of man, will to live and longing for death, similarity and difference, slowly and putting one's soul into it while comparing them to one's own feeling and experiences.

It is colourful and vivid text, illustrated by examples every once in a while. It makes us of that of human nature which is rare for a 46-year-old, the huge amount of contacts which reach to Sambia, Bangladesh, Brazil - and still avoids the pit of shallowness.

Könkkölä takes an unconditionally rejecting stance on the hard question, euthanasia, even more stricter than archiater Risto Pelkonen, whose fine opinion we recently got to read. Könkkölä handles this core philosophical question, whether man may set himself above death, in a manner which is the highest qualifying offering of the book. The problem still won't get concluded in the world in near future. Especially euthanasia's - like many other of man's difficulties - relation to the population explosion is particularly grave and tough.

One matter on which I little oppose Könkkölä, or at least become hesitating, is the stripping of pity. Should charity necessarily be considered only as degrading the weak and elevating self? Or can't there be something beautiful in elevating self? Shouldn't man be able to feel himself, even sometimes, good and noble, above "casual" friendliness? My old mother a least has taught me, in my opinion wisely, that man must learn to give but also to receive in life - without being vexed, or a forcing thought of returning service.



Descriptive to Könkkölä's mode of action is the aftermath of a speech the undersigned held for the young Green movement in Turku long ago in which I warned the Greens from becoming imprinted as a movement of small minorities, such as the homosexuals, vegetarians, feminists, and handicapped. I was also terrified by the shine and expense of the tools of handicapped. (This question of expences is covered by the book in many turns as some other people too have shown their cold heartedness.)

Kalle didn't start to mope or hold a grudge, but he came to debate, give reasons for, and socialize with his special car from Helsinki to Häme. The following is told in the book: many loads of firewood which I had gathered from logging left-overs were transported with Könkkölä's car and the his assistant Ville Komsi to my home yard. The operation benefitted me greatly and it was a victory for diplomacy. Kalle has opened several new perspectives for me.

It is easy to agree with Kalle Könkkölä's main idea: handicappedness must be accepted by both community and society, and the handicapped themselves. One must not wrap up, lull oneself, nor cherish unrealistic hopes of "healing". And before all else one must go and be allowed to go along fully authorized to the community of "healthy" - no special schools, no institutes when it's possible. To put it briefly: just come along! Most of us have great defects, traumas, and inhibitions which don't come out as visually as handicappedness or visual impairment, but maybe as serious or even more.

I'm attracted by the point of view of diversity which handicappedness offers. The life and thinking of Kalle Könkkölä point out how handicappedness gives the ingredients for an excitingly different own subculture and personal philosophy. On the other hand, it is the homogenization of people and ways of living, the black cloak of monoculture covering the whole Earth, which is taking away the last drop of meaningfulness and justification for the existence of destructive human species.

And what becomes of nature straining expensive technology, the handicapped and people with sensory defects may use it with my warmest approval - as long the physically healthy are stripped of it to the minimum!

But the greatest outcome from handicapped coming along to society could be the soothening and softening of atmosphere following it. If we have handicapped among us all the time, practically being noticed in every issue, and above all if we "others" confess and show our limitations - admitting and beginning from the fact that man is weak and frail creature instead of a superior entrepreneur -, the headless rush would surely ease. There is a small concrete example in the book how the gasping barging of parliamentarists had to stop on a bus trip when they had to wait for Könkkölä's wheelchair being moved at every turn.

The whole setting of the aims of the Western and Finnish Society, of "capitalism", is insane, hard, destructive, and unfortunate for man. Economical growth, efficiency, and competition are thoroughly wrong banners. Enterpreneur creaking at the joints, innovator, and top-ranking student are all thoroughly wrong idols. These are the questions of life and death. There is a convulsive need to ease up, slow down, and give up, both for ecological reasons, for the sake of survival of the biosphere, and for the sake of good, tolerable human life. The handicapped may help us on that.

1996

A Brave Societal Critic

Eero Taivalsaari's book 'Alaston totuus markkinavoimista' ["The Naked Truth about Economical Forces"] is an ambitious effort. It is not as ambitious as Eero Paloheimo's volumes which embrace the whole world. But also Taivalsaari draws wide curves, much wider than the name of the book referring to a concise subject (which is a failure, in my opinion) assumes. He depicts - and truly criticizes! - the atmosphere of society and its modern power stuctures widely and by many examples. Disheartening militarization and the decadence of culture, civilization, and moral are illustrated convincingly.

The vigorous frankness of the book is attracting. Lipponen, Aho, Ahtisaari, and other mentally lack-lustre politicians are being rebuked in an overwhelming manner. "Take a look to the left or right, there is no other measurement visible than capital. The highest state officials seem no longer to have anything better to do than work as spokesmen of export industry in countries which are strictly avoided by civilized Europe."

One of the most important themes is EU and essentially its core idea free trade, and they are pummelled without objections and crushed deep into the earth where they belong. The EU criticism has some really smart points (pp. 261-262), while reading which one faces a familiar contradiction: you can't help but laugh when the state of matters should make you cry.

Due to the broadness of Taivalsaari's theme, it is unavoidable that many older issues are recapped. And by necessity, there are pieces of slack text along stern and excellent sentences and definitions ("The Absurd Rushing of Making Profit") or headlines ("Schools into Engine Rooms"). Bemoaning trafficking and prostitution, for example, succeeds conventionally. But the kind of stylistic clumsiness such as "Along calling in names and telling to screw off there is assaulting" is a rare exception, because Taivalsaari's text is mostly excellent prose.

The text isn't brilliant though, Taivalsaari isn't a writer, but a journalist and as that the top of this country. Sometimes the mannerisms of journalist jargon cause inconvenience: "banana states", "field personnel of trade union", "field", "slop bucket journalism", "stigma axe". A long chapter about Helsingin Sanomat is partly annoying gossiping of journalists' insider circle, but not all of it, there is also space for interesting perspectives.

Taivalsaari's Blind Spots

The main deal of Taivalsaari's text can be signed without hesitation and excitedly. That's why it's crazy that the following counter-arguments take up more space than the compliments. Nevertheless, it is a part of business; critique needs to be argued more elaborately. And here even the counter-arguments will be serious and fundamental in regards to opinions.

It is exactly his main theme, the diagnosis of economical structures, in which Taivalsaari is stumbling. He has an incurable longing for romanticising poverty, an inner need to see "deprived" when there are none. And exploiters he sees in a rather skewed manner. He writes: "There is no shortage of money as is shown by the tax reductions of the rich and fighters costing tens of billions, and other arms deals." All that is correct, but when contrasted to the boisterous consumption of middle- and low-incomes they are small pennies - and marginal affairs in the collapse of natural economy. Taivalsaari forgets completely that the Finnish people have spent billions of marks (of their net income) into their private cars, luxury yachts and villas, millions of journeys abroad to sunny beaches, and above all the homes of most Finns resemble royal castles with all the machinery and equipment - and that hundreds of thousands of "ordinary citizens" have a lot to worry about how to make the most favourable investments with the remaining loose money after all the extravagancy.

Taivalsaari reasons the aims of large corporations all wrong. They don't, whether they were national or multi-national, Nokias or Mitsubishis, ever want to drop large portions of populations down to state of being "underprivileged" or "alienated", but the very contrary. Their philosophy is exactly the same and as carnal as the leading idea behind the "welfare state:" to create sale for products by dispersing consumption capacity, to give purchasing power to as many as possible. A filthy rich citizen won't buy more of most products than a household of smaller income.

The most peculiar aspect is Taivalsaari's relationship to the trade union movement. There "field" and trustees are honeybuns, but they turn into exploiters at the very moment when comrades elect them as managers. And it is, nevertheless, these criminal trade union managers who have gotten the "vacation bonuses, overtime bonuses, and sickness leave payments", which Taivalsaari admires as inviolable values, in arduous incomes policy negotiations - and which are the wildest weeds of braggart standard of living for an ecologist.

Generally Taivalsaari has a paranoid attitude to "upper class", "managers", "masters"; there everyone are gangsters and blood-suckers. A leftist comes out of Taivalsaari when you scratch the surface a little. This is a hapless encumbrance - and especially in Taivalsaari's case who is much more and much better than a leftist. By the way, where has disappeared the only part of crowd in which the sense of responsibility is flickering at least, the academic educated class? Taivalsaari forgets that completely, although he values civilization, science, and art as concepts.



The Threshold Questions of Ecological Thinking

The attitude to the population explosion, human value, and human rights is the threshold question of the deepest ecological insight. I would become very depressed if so brave and diligently thinking man as Eero Taivalsaari didn't understand what population explosion and human rights really mean - in the world and Finland -, unless I would believe that he will eventually reach the insight as he thinks things further. We ecologists haven't either gotten into these stern insights easily, not easily nor instantly.

Taivalsaari is still inside the prevailing system, thinks on its conditions, not above it, is not an alternative human as we ecologists. He doesn't - yet, I want to say - accept the real limits of the resources of the biosphere. He disapproves nicely (and rightly) the exploitation of forests and extinctions of species - and writes with the same breath how the living standards of the "deprived" and "alienated" people must be made better. That is an impossible equation.

Taivalsaari uses the concept zero sum game, but doesn't acknowledge its contents yet. If we already had seriously attempted to help all the poor and alienated to get "vacation bonuses, overtime bonuses, and sickness leave payment", the life on Earth would have faded away long ago. Eero my child, the great issues of the world aren't "both and", but "either or". There are things that exclude each other. We must abandon our childish shock and confess that the load of six billion people, a hopeless train, is only possible in extreme poverty, if even then.

Eventually the justness and equality questions of human groups and populations aren't serious questions. Only through an extremely improbable total nuclear war the inner contradictions of human race threaten life. On the contrary, life is dead certainly threatened by the braggart human, subjugator of nature, killer clamouring about the "human rights"; the more certainly and faster the better its co-operation is working, the more it blows "onto the same embers", the better democracy is working. The core of all wisdom is concealed in the attempt to return man in his position in creation, otherwise there is no hope.

Taivalsaari on Finnish Culture

I return on the details of the book. He is concerned about the negativity of my message, misanthropy. I guess that argument will return to its caster like a boomerang. In reality, I have always patiently emphasized also the latent value and goodness of man - the new and unique the human race has added to evolution. I have highlighted both science, art, philosophy, ideology, civility, and those applying charity and small minorities. But there are none in the book to be found depicted in a positive light, except for three persons: a man called Renny Jokelin, a trustee and metalworker Kai, and a drug bum, with whose depiction the book begins. Eventually, even the major part of population; the "crowd", "depraved", "field", of whose superior value an indefinite unspoken assumption is floating above the text, is revealed to be stupid, slack, and manipulated mass.

At last: what is keeping Eero Taivalsaari's social figures in subjection? One inconvenience might be that the man is as stiff as a spear, lacking even the slightest slackness, looseness - and sense of humour totally. But is this merely a weakness? Being sober-sides may also be a solid support for an idealist - and the central issues of the world are truly such to which humour doesn't belong.

The strongest side of Taivalsaari is his (enviable!) persistence. His splendid flag ship, "Näköpiiri" ["Horizon"], ran aground. A headstrong and long project for establishing a new cultural magazine "Syvien Rivien" ["Of The People"] eventually failed and took his money and supporter's. He was expelled from "Vaihtoehto EU:lle " ["An Alternative to EU"] organisation, the reference group closest to him, and its magazine. Finally Elonkehä ["Biosphere"] was taken from under him. But Taivalsaari turns bitterness into his strength and doesn't give up. Soon we will meet him again making brilliant radio programmes, arranging high quality seminars, publishing interesting - and truly inspiring - book in which large mapping of culture someone else would have spent ten years. Taivalsaari is an important person, we expect much from him. I cite a beautiful verse from The Tales of Ensign Stål: "If I can't go with the others, I may always go alone."

1997

The condition and quality of modern domestic literature is a constant subject of debate. I find myself belonging to the party of steeply satisfied who think that the high quality of has endured - maybe the best of all the proportions of art in here. Although the great monumental novels are missing, it is hard to locate them even on other linguistic areas. We have excellent story tellers and masterful short story writers, and abundance of original styles.

And then we have an amazing genre in which the quality has clearly risen: nature books. I have already wondered in my reviews of animal themed grand volumes of recent years how there are many excellent and inspiring stylists among nature researchers. Let us think of Antti Leinonen, Tuomo Hurme, or Juha Taskinen who clearly break the boundaries of categories - fiction and nonfiction. Jorma Luhta's Metson kuolema ["The Death of a Wood Grouse"] is pure fiction; Eero Murtomäki's Pyyntimiehiä ["Hunting men"] is one of the pearls of our short story art.

It is Murtomäki's Mahtilintu ["Power Bird"] that comes into your mind when you make yourself familiar with the main volume of Heikki Willamo to date, Haukkametsä [" Hawk Forest "], with which the author is finally joining the masters. The both books also indicate that nature writers follow the common trends of fiction. They contain periods which belong to the still fresh tradition of confession literature. That is, ever after the grand opening of Christer Kihlman, one of the more interesting plots of our literature - may Kari Hotakainen with his sulky macho policy say any nonsense he wishes.

Willamo doesn't become over-enthusiastic with ecstasy alone in the shades of his forest - he does strictly avoid grandiloquence as a competent writer of this style -, but also depicts moments of depression and lack of faith. Sometimes he wonders whether he is deceiving both himself and the reader when he puts his soul into the enchantment of untouched forest, into a world which now exists as whole as depicted only as the last chips; as strands which are instantly being choked from every corner by the noisy, deserting wood industry. Is he just a preserver of memories? And he ponders the peculiar contradiction of his roles, his dichotomy. Elsewhere days, weeks, and months being totally dedicated to primeval forests which remain absolutely concealed from most of the people, elsewhere "civil life:" family, friends, the stripped clear world of human majority. Neither does he avoid the situation which is so familiar to many "real" fiction authors (and publishers!). The book was already supposed to be ready, enough for publishing - but then doubt and superego's stumbling phase intervened, and finally the book demanded another whole year of subject-material and polishing.

'Haukkametsä' is a novel in my opinion, and its cast are - part of which are individuals, part of which are representatives of their species - the ruler and principal character goshawk, Ural owl, pygmy owl, nutcracker, and Heikki Willamo. No other human being is mentioned, not even his expedition comrade.

The book isn't conventional in any degree, nor is it a conventional description of the idyll of spring and summer day. Dozens, if not hundreds, of nights in wilderness, rain, wind, and fog are equally essential. Although the event rich phases of spring heat, family life, and youth becoming independent get the most lines, equally important is the story about life - or death - at the turn of seasons and at winter. Maybe the most dramatic is the description of a winter when Willamo and the rest of the cast are having a difficult time.

It creates one of a kind of novelty that the book's events are situated in our southernmost nature. Already on the second line we meet a nut grove! Our best nature books have depicted Lapland, Kainuu, and Ostrobothnia. Southern forest is lusher, denser - more twilight, shadows, mysteriousness.

When I read realistic fiction I have a nasty habit of severely estimating the credibility of text whether facts tally. Willamo's generous narration has also plenty of room for scientific material. As an ornithologist colleague I get to smile approvingly from time to time. The depictions of speech and sound are often alien even bird manuals, but Willamo hears even them in a same manner: the goldcrest "winds" its song; Ural owl's hoot has a "bouncing" rhythm.

While pondering how deep he can get into a goshawk's mental life, Willamo gets to admit that it will remain at the level of distant admiration, behind the veil of secrecy. He abstains from anthropocentrism pretty closely. When I myself go further than identifying with the emotional life of birds, the difference might derive from that I know the life of terns, seagulls, and goosanders of open and wide landscapes the best, whose whole life is public as if being served on tray. I guess that the manners of living determine the character. The beasts of deep forests are involuntarily morose and withdrawing, while the birds of flashing waters and man's beaches show the joys and sorrows of their lives.

I have already thanked Willamo's use of pen. If I allow myself to complain about something, we are having a different comprehension of punctuation. I think principal clauses should be separated with a comma in a sentence, and otherwise it is a place for a comma, if not a period, always when reciter halts his speech.

Although I have always thought that one word says more than a thousand images, I owe an excited praise for the illustration of Willamo's novel - especially when the maker spares us from even the slightest references to objective sizes and other technical details of photography. The special fascination of images is that they are consistently pieces of art; unsharp, characterizing the shady appearance of a forest, or then exciting event shots. The perspective is original; even the Tengmalm's owl won't stare straight into your eyes as usual, but peeks from behind a tree. You might find a tiny willow tit from the lower corner of a big scenery image. The green needle-mass of a spruce fills the picture, until you find the vigilant eye and beak of a goshawk peeping out from the greenness. Many owls are seen as silhouettes against the darkness of night. The make-up and the whole appearance of the book are Willamo's own design, and it is stylistic work without misdemeanours.

1998