The picture was taken in the early evening, Friday 29 July 2005 and shows a view northwest over Rapadalen in the Sarek national park. I’m on my way up to the high plateau between the peaks of Bielaljåhkå and Låddebákte, where we’re going to camp. There’s a cold wind blowing but now and then there comes a splash of warm sunshine.
On the evening I took that picture I’d been living in Sweden for nearly five years but it was only the second time I’d gone out on a wilderness tour like that. And for the first time ever, I’d taken a digital camera with me. Unaccustomed to it’s enormous storage capacity and the possibility of immediately inspecting each picture I devoted a lot of time to the camera. When I got home I found there were almost two hindered pictures on the memory card, far more than I would ever want to have in print. It was then I realized that with every picture taken I had lost something, a precious moment of my life, when I wasn’t really there, an instant when something other than Nature had made it’s tracks on me. With the new camera it was like carrying and taking care of a hungry little monster. And later, when I came home, I’d be compelled to take care of everything the little monster had sucked in and guard all those ephemeral images, through ever upgrade, every change of hardware, now and for ever more. Jag had no idea that the new technology was to be so invasive, or so destructive.
On my later backpacking trips I’ve chosen to take with me a somewhat older camera and a couple of rolls of film. Recently I’ve even gone back to using a sketchpad. I think one becomes tired of machine-made images. We need something more, something with a more of a human touch, images laboriously shaped by hand, like the figures in an ancient rock carving. If I am to make images from Nature then I want more than can be contained in the push of a button. I want my pictures to be more of substance than of numbers.
In this picture I have brought together images of symbols cut in stone at two ancient, sacred places. The figures in red are taken from one of my photographs of rock carvings by the Nämforsen waterfall at Näsåker in Ångermanland. These are bronze-age carvings from around 2000 to 500 BC. The background image is from a photograph I took in 1995, showing the Pali inscriptions at Dhauligiri, near Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India. The text commemorates repentance of the emperor Ashoka after his war against the Kalinga nation, 260 BC, and his resolution to continue his rule solely by peaceful means, according the Buddhist principle of Dhammavijaya (conquest through righteousness). 
It’s five in the afternoon and I’m sitting out in the Cafe opposite Hemköp. This is the second time I’ve tried drawing this scene and the equipment round the tills is familiar enough but the people crowding through the gates are a bit more problematic. You don’t have much time to get an impression of them. Their movements are repettive though and I often combine the figures to make an composite or average. Not so with the lille lad climing up onto the shelf though. I couldn’t miss him. The tall black-coated figure to the right is genuine too. Looks like the Grim Reaper. 
Another sunny afternoon and I feel like trying to sketch with a bit of colour. I’ve got a box of kids crayons, a fine black felt pen and a pencil. After about an hour or so it’s beginning to look like something. Cute figures but as ever a bit fuzzy on all the leaves and branches.
A couple of days ago I found a bunch of old casette tapes I recognised. I had to dismantle both them and my cassette deck to recover the sound but it was worth the effort. I retrieved a handful of music I hadn’t thought abut for years. It was recorded on a little Grundig radio-cassette that I bought in 1977, during my first term at York University.
