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Every morning in the days leading up to spring, Aivar Ruukel looks out of his bedroom window and finds that his favorite season of the year has arrived.
If he’s lucky and the weather is nice, he has a quick breakfast, grabs a life jacket and paddle from the store, and rushes out to pull out his haabjas, a traditional canoe.
From his vantage point on the boat, a network of roads appear and Ruukel paddles through the flooded forest, entering a semi-submerged world of flooded fields and canals.
Dawn is the best time to observe the delta and jump into the canoe in the first light of day to see this vast area of spongy bogs and forests turned into peat bogs.
“I remember my father brought me here when I was a child and I will never forget him,” Ruukel said, looking at the flooded forests.
“The woodpeckers rattled in the trees; the flowers peeking over the water; the sounds and smells of the arrival of the new season what said.”
What is the “fifth station”
In almost every place, a weather report that predicts heavy rain anticipates a bad day, while a report that talks about dangerous flooding doesn’t want to hear it.
Unless you’re a guide like Ruukel and you live in Soomaa National Park, a bog in southwest Estonia known for its annual flooding that can be as alarming as 8 kilometers wide and 5 meters high.
To put it simply, this is Estonia’s so-called ‘fifth season’, an unstable period that comes after winter and shortly before spring each year.
No one can determine exactly how long to come, but this annual phenomenon flawlessly appears between March and April, resulting in flooding that redefines the national park as a flooded basin, with submerged houses, sunken apple trees and raised swamps.
It is the triumph of water on earth and also of the will of the human being over Mother Nature.
Tourist waters
“Each year comes with new challenges,” explained Ruukel, who is entering his 27th season as a canoe guide in the region.
“When the floods come, we have to figure out where it is safe to row, but there is an inherent risk in navigating such cold, moving water. You have to be careful.”
Soomaa, which means ‘land of crowds’, is located in a low basin on the western slopes of the Sakala highlands.
On the morning of our meeting, I also met another guide, whose investigation of this annual phenomenon earned him the nickname Mr. Flood (Mr. Flood, in Spanish).
Algis Martsoo pioneered ‘fifth season tourism’ in southwest Estonia and developed a detailed map of canoe routes in Soomaa National Park that meander through peatlands for about 7 km.
Navigable routes appear, giving an air of a gigantic slalom circuit to the whole place, which disappears when the waters recede. Everyone becomes obsessed with the life cycle of the fifth season. But no one other than Martsoo.
“People are very curious about our fifth station,” said Martsoo, who carried out his doctoral research in 2010 during the highest water season in Estonia for half a century, when the overflow reached a height. surprisingly five meters.
“It feels like you are canoeing the Amazon, and suddenly you are paddling a road that is a few feet below the surface.
Martsoo is right that people might be interested in visiting this flooded land.
Over the past few years, thousands of Estonians have discovered the magical waterways of Soomaa and currently Mr. Flood and Ruukel run Soomaa.com, an outdoor activities company with a fleet of 40 Canadian-style canoes for tours. excursions and adventure tours. visits.
As a co-owner and founder, Ruukel explored the park from afar, taking canoe rides in the evenings in summer, quietly watching beavers build dikes, or walking the Kuresoo, Estonia’s largest bog.
But it is the anticipation of the flood and the thrill of the unknown that continues to inspire him.
Often in a typical year he sees the waters rise ten feet, while other times he and Mr. Flood may paddle through the flooded meadows to see common cranes, nesting swans and dogs. raccoon stranded on tree branches, poplars, birches and beeches.
The park’s most formidable wildlife – lynxes, wolves and grizzly bears – leave long before the floods.
The annual phenomenon appears, without fail, between March and April.
With its stunted and skeletal trees, the bewitching landscape may scare the visitor away, but the fifth season is, after all, the result of a combination of unusual factors.
Consequences of the thaw
Soomaa, which means ‘land of crowds’, is located in a low basin on the western slopes of the highlands of Sakala and its rivers cannot contain the large amount of snowmelt from the mountains with the snowmelt after the winter.
The Navesti, Halliste, Raudna, Kopu, Toramaa and Lemmjogi rivers converge at Soomaa, but only the Navesti empties into the Baltic Sea.
The consequence is the creation of the Riisa flood zone, a natural basin of 175 km2 considered to be the largest floodplain in Northern Europe.
Another element that shapes Soomaa National Park is geology. In the past, this was an ancient ocean floor created 12,000 years ago during the last ice age, when the Baltic Sea was the ice lake of the Baltic and western Estonia was frozen earth.
The retreating glaciers left a great depression characterized by sedimentary marshes, and today Soomaa remains the largest intact peatland system in Europe, essentially a giant natural sponge.
“In summer, the average water flow per second in Soomaa is 5-10 cubic meters,” noted Jana Pldnurk, head of hydrology at the Estonian Environment Agency, whom I spoke to on Zoom.
“But in the fifth season it is 10 times larger and the torrent rises up to 100 cubic meters per second. Add to this the fact that an extraordinary 70% of the annual excess water is also produced at these dates and you will get a little surprising. The data. ”
The 70 people who live permanently on the edge of the park have learned to cope with the annual overflow.
Although he lives in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, Pldnurk has witnessed the Soomaa flooding on several occasions and supervises the monitoring team at Riisa, the nearest hydrological station upstream from the park.
Here, records dating back nearly 100 years show that the greatest floods in history occurred in the 1930s and 1950s.
I asked him how he felt about the flooding, especially since once the 1.5 meter water level is passed Soomaa begins to fill like a tub. Some consider it dangerous. And she?
“There is always a sense of danger, but it is offset by the excitement,” Pldnurk replied.
“I once remember I was in a canoe where I could only see the water in the direction I was looking, and I didn’t know where the river started and ended. It was a very strange feeling.
Resistant population
Newspapers report the year 1931, the year the inundation reached a record height of 5.53 meters, extolling the glories of the past and the unwavering spirit of the locals, detailing stories of farmers building boats for the livestock and storing bread for weeks to come.Avoid starving.
Around this time, skilled locals also built their own temporary wooden and hanging bridges, while the Haabjas canoe became the only form of transportation.
“The memory of past floods makes people realize that at any time there can be a shutdown and they can be locked in their homes,” Pldnurk said.
“It is exactly the same thing that is happening now with the coronavirus.”
Soomaa is the largest intact peatland system in Europe and its forests are home to elk, deer, lynx, wolves and bears.
Then, as now, the fifth season helped cultivate a deeply emotional landscape.
About 70 people, foreigners and farmers, live permanently on the edge of the park and have all learned to cope with the annual overflow.
Main roads are bypassed and half of the park’s residents are confined for up to four weeks while the waters recede.
Still, it does create a sense of belonging that can only be understood by someone with a genuine affinity for the fifth season.
The impact of climate change
What also unites different sectors in Soomaa are the conversations about climate change and how it could soon manifest itself in even bigger and more unpredictable floods.
Especially, according to Pldnurk, as long-term climate scenarios show that annual precipitation is increasing.
“There is definitely a change in characteristics compared to last year,” said the expert.
Spring floods, which can last up to four weeks, create new routes for open water canoeing.
“Climate change means that flooding can occur at more unusual times, so it is possible that in the future Estonia will experience a sixth season.”
Watching the canoeists maneuver through the flooded forest, it was hard to ignore Soomaa’s unique appeal.
It is, as Ruukel told me, a wonderful combination of water, time and space, and for a while, it offered a brief window into another world, a more peculiar world.
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