Hiking with a group of teens in Sweden
My first hiking trip was in Darlana in Sweden. I volunteered to organize a three weeks trip with about 40 teens between 13 and 15. We stayed in little typical red wooden cottages and used to spend the days with lots of workshops like playing instruments, painting T-shirts, cooking or just swimming and canooing. Most of our activity took place in the area around our houses. But in the last week, when the young crowd became bored, one of the sons of the cottage-owner offered a guided day tour. When he showed his favourite walk on the map, we knew that not everybody was able to participate. Although our tourguide looked quite handsome and most of the girls would have loved to go for a walk with him, only 18 really wanted to participate in the tour. Everybody had his own rucksack, rainjacket and we prepared some sandwiches. nobody had to carry around the full, heavy bottles because the tour guide, his name was Jakob, assured us of the cleanness of the water from Swedish springs. Even in August it was only about 20 degrees and the forest looked rich gree and not dry at all. At the beginning a few people lost their shoes in the unexpected muddy ground. Until we could convince everybody to close their vans or other absolutely not suitable walkingshoes properly. South of Darlana province lies Värmland, an area of wide open expanse. We saw a lot of blue mountain in the deep mountains and had a lot of fun in climbing the mountains and taking pictures. We had left very early in the morning and arrived at the mighty Klarälven river for lunchtime. Some of the younger people were so tired that some of the group fell asleep in the sun, before our potatoes were cooked in the fire just next to the river. After 2 hours lunchbreak we started again. While first we more or less sticked to the walking lanes, this time we crossed the forest, so that we sometimes had to walk through knee-high grass, where trousers became completely wet, but were rewarded with the fantastic taste of blueberries, we picked all the way through. We finally arrived at the cottages for dinner. I promise, t hose who had been on the trip caused absolutely no trouble that night. They just went to bed. No alcohol, no cigarettes or whatever…
