WHEN I WAS A BOY, we had a playground like none I've ever seen since. I grew up in Skara, on the Västgöta plain. My father had a cafe whose back-door opened onto the court yard shared by all the houses in the block. Here, in the shadow of several large trees, were sheds, garages and outdoor toilets, all with tarpaper roofs, all in a jumble, all commingled with carts from the Fisktorget fish market. But it wasn't here that we played. Our playground was a lake called Hornborgasjön.
In early spring we'd take our bicycles out in the icy slush, seeking our way on the winding gravel road down towards Stenum, past the church and the country store and over the shore meadows to the swampy fore shore. Here we'd leave our bicycles and plod along until the water sloshed into our rubber boots. Herds of deer would follow our progress and flee over still snow covered water fields. A plank sufficed to take us to the trees growing knee-deep in water, out to our huts and look-outs. We always left well before dawn so we'd be sure to get there before the sun rose. The dark was never a problem. Indeed, we never gave it a thought.
Well up in the trees, we'd listen for the advent of d1e mystical 'energy' preparing to attack from beyond the mountain on the other side of the lake. The smoke from just-lit fires rose from the houses as thin ribbons dressing the Billingen cliff edge. There! Strange vibrating signals rose from among the reeds. The 'enemy' was coming! And while we knew that in rea1ity it was the morning call of the bittern, mixed with the lapwings' shrill pee-wit, all these sounds which climbed into the morning sky in ever increasing volumes were to us as magic. They were secret messages winging back and forth across the leaden grey surface of the lake. We tried to interpret them, to learn their import, to pin point whence the enemy attack would come -and how? Maybe from the forest fringe to the south? Or may be even from underwater!
Then, as the sun rose over the ridge slowly scattering the morning mists, a cuckoo might claim a branch on the tree but a few metres from our hiding place, reinforcing our side with its clucking. In the same way the buzzard at its post in the next tree would join. Our forces grew at once. The comeliest comrade, the one we in truth waited for, the one we most of all wanted on our side was the blue hen harrier. Yet though we knew that a few harriers nested in the Homborgasjö area, they almost never came. But there was a chance!
When ever we talked about our lord, it was the name we focused on. Was he truly blue? Were we then the only ones in the whole world with a blue overlord?
And sometimes luck was with us! Our chieftain came. We froze. The harrier seemed to command the entire heavens with but a few wing heats, ever sailing, gliding, up and down, its soft undulating movements completely dominating the realm. Not blue. Maybe a light blue, though we never discussed it among our selves. This was our King, swept in his blue robe, our absolute favourite, our Majesty.
Later in life I've tried to articulate why just this bird came to be some sort of synthesis of what we experienced at this, our childhood playground. And though several explanations occurred to me, none helped. Then I heard that the name the local old folks had for the harrier was The Angelic One'. Suddenly I understood. It wasn't a bird, it was an angel who consecrated our play with its presence. It was respect this almost white bird of prey taught us, respect for life itself.
In truth an incomparable playground. . .
I don't know what persuaded film director Arne Sucksdorff to leave Stockholm for the Valle Hundred. What urge it was brought him to Remningstorp between Skärv and Lerdala just after completing his full-length film about Chendru, the boy from India. Maybe it was because Valle has just as many lakes as there are days in a year, lakes filled with perch and pike and crayfish. As I said, I don't know. But move he did, settling not far from where I lived.
The papers said he was going to make a film called The Boy in the Tree'. Only 16, I hopped onto my bicycle and pedalled 20 kilometres to the palace-like country estate he'd rented. I knocked and asked if I could possibly work on the production that summer as an errand boy, a go-fer. I am still surprised and glad of his yes.
The first filming days were out at me lake, at Homborgasjön.imagine grown-ups working at our playground! If that could be done, I
decided, I was going to be a film director too. Some of the most fantastic sequences of TheBoy in the Tree' were filmed at Hornborgasjön. I remember that when the filming was completed, we were entrusted with the job of emptying all the crayfish-pots in Lake Flämsjö below the house. Believe me if you will, but when we came back, the boatwas filled half way up our boodegs with crayfish!
A few years ago I too left Stockholm after thirty years in the big city. I settled in Forshem, a small village at the foot of Kinnekulle Mountain near the Lake Vänemshore. And now I got the chance myself to make a full-length film, this one tided 'Nature's Warrior'. Its subject is me same as in many of the films I have made, that of man's relationship to nature, of what we do to it and it to us. It was filmed in its entirety in Skaraborg.
As I travel around the country showing the film, I'm often asked where it's been filmed. People think I must have travelled far and wide around Sweden to find this unequalled and diverse nature. And to each of the many persons
Who have asked me, I've been able to answer that not one scene is filmed much more than 10 kilometres from my home. In effect, I've been able to make the film in my backyard! I dare say this is highly unusual. But the untouched nature, the untold richness I needed for the film is still to be found here. It is a nature that's been cared for, not ravaged, exploited or transformed since the time of my boyhood. It is indeed remarkable.
But I am not alone in leaving the big city to be closer to nature. What fills me with wonder and the greatest confidence is that each year so many guests from most every corner of the world come to just this place. I'm talking about all these birds who take for granted that this nature, this beauty we are surrounded by each day without giving much thought, that just this part of the world is the best place to bring up their young. All have an amazing faith that just this rock-ledge, just this tree-fork is the best place in the world to build their nests. These pilgrims have their holy places in our woods. It is my devout wish that the steadfast trust they hold in how we care for their sylvan home will be mirrored in our stewardship of it.
Each year begins when the cranes arrive at Dagsnäsand Homborgasjön. It is when they return from foreign shores that I know the best time of the year has arrived. First when their trumpeting echoes over the fields can I allow myself to celebrate spring. Finally they have come! Life can begin! And as exalted as I am then, so miserable am I in September when their rallying calls resound once more high, high above me presaging their departure. How can you leave us alone here in the dark? Promise you'll return next year! Promise, or I'm not sure we can make it. Promise that you won't abandon us! And so far, they have always returned...
/Stefan Jarl Film Director
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Stefan Jarl, född 18 mars 1941, dokumentärfilmare och filmregissör. Stefan Jarl är känd för att göra filmer med ett socialt engagemang. Stefan Jarl
