Above the Clouds at Dawn: A Foggy Autumn Sunrise in Koli National Park

A short account of what happens when a landscape is so beautiful that you fear it will vanish, and you simply have to run and look at it.

The restaurant and breakfast room of the hotel at the top of Koli have panoramic views over Lake Pielinen. The place is always impressive, but that October morning the view stopped me in my tracks. We never actually made it to breakfast at first, because the captivating sight pulled us straight out onto the balcony of the reception lobby.

Speechless, I watched Pielinen lying almost completely hidden beneath a thick, dough-like blanket of fog. Where one of Finland’s largest lakes should have been, I saw a sea of clouds. It reminded me faintly of the feeling on a plane, or high up on a mountaintop, when the clouds are suddenly below your feet. The air was perfectly still, the sun was rising, and my heart was bursting with the privilege of witnessing that moment.

We did make it to the breakfast table, but a voice inside me was screaming and wouldn’t let me enjoy my coffee or toast. Of course I could see the view through the window, but I knew the summit of Koli was only the shortest dash away, and that the morning moment wouldn’t last. Luckily, this time we could arrange toddler-watching shifts so that I was allowed to bolt from the table. The coffee went undrunk and breakfast unfinished, but what do a few crumbs matter when the morning sun is calling?

I practically ran to our room to grab a thicker top and an outdoor jacket. To save time, I decided my flat-soled sneakers would have to do. I strode, hopped and almost ran up the steps of Koli as fast as I could manage, equally breathless from the sprint and from the view opening up in front of me.

Naturally, I took quite a few photos: the evidence accompanies this story. But I also set aside time just to stare. From high above, I studied the fog drifting over the surface of the lake. How it took turns revealing and hiding the islands of Matoset, Iso-Hölö and Iso-Korppi. How it was magically still and yet ever so subtly alive. The sun rose and coloured the sky. Pielinen stayed hidden, and I soaked in the beauty of the view.

I’m not sure sunrises and sunsets are really worth chasing, but when a chance comes along to witness something this beautiful, I can’t think of a single good reason to let it pass.

– Karoliina

The evening before had already offered a preview.

The full moon had risen into the sky as dusk fell, and light, mysterious wisps of fog had begun to gather over the fields and in the hollows of the valleys, as if some quiet, invisible celebration were being prepared under cover of night. By the time we went down to breakfast, the landscape had revealed enough to light a restless, excited glint in her eyes.

I had stayed at the table with the toddler and a coffee cooling in a large mug pinched from the tea station. She had once told me she would like to see a sunrise at Koli someday, just to see it. I said: go. And I thought: there it is, out there, right now.

I gulped down the rest of my coffee, scooped the toddler into my arms and slipped a slice of bread into my pocket, because I wanted to see it too. The two of us set off towards the summit.

Islands rose from the sea of fog. The lake’s own islands were closest, and further off stood the crowns of the rounded, forested hills of the region. That morning they weren’t hills at all, but something I had no word for until that moment: cloud islands. Dark, their edges serrated with spruce tops, and along their shores the mist lay so still that not even a ripple stirred.

A sensible person would say they are just hilltops with their bases hidden by the fog. The sensible person is right, of course, and that is exactly why they never see anything like this. The sensible person is asleep, or being efficient.

Cloud islands only appear when the light comes in low, there is no wind and the moment is right. But then they are real. As real as anything you could row ashore to. Slowly the fog shifted, rebuilding familiar shores into different ones. The islands looked bigger and darker than they really were, and only once the fog drew back did you notice how readily the eye had believed the picture drawn by shadows. Perhaps people are the same. Sometimes you look at something for too long through your own fog, until it turns into a distorted image you start to take for the truth. Then it takes a quiet kind of courage to look again, as into the surface of a calm lake that also reflects the one looking. Maybe the shadow was your own. Maybe fear had drawn shapes into the landscape that were never there, and what was real had been waiting behind the fog all along, right where it had always been.

The low sun cast a golden glow over everything. It was calm, and so quiet that the moment felt almost too fragile to touch. Here and there the surface of the lake opened up, bright, between the drifts of fog. I had seen every part of it before, the fog, the lake, the morning light, but together they were something new. That’s what happens with familiar things. You look at them and think you know them, until the light changes. Or perhaps they haven’t changed at all. Perhaps the one looking has.

We only get to see each morning once. This one too, where the golden glow of sunrise strips away the spell of the mist the night had summoned, lifting it from the blaze of autumn foliage, and from the face of the lake. That’s why I said: go.

– Antti

Text and photos: Karoliina Kaski and Antti Huttunen

This article was translated from Finnish with the help of AI.

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