Tyresta National Park

From Myrna - July 2010

Despite my best intentions, at bottom I'm a creature of routine. When we moved to Stockholm I vowed museums, beaches, field trips. Instead, Myrna rarely gets further from home than the nearest playground. At least I can take comfort in the fact that the story's the same with plenty of other parents.

So when a friend had the initiative to propose a light stroller-hike through the Tyresta National Park (about 20km outside of Stockholm), the idea caught on quick. Myrna and I headed out around 8am on Friday, and before long we'd assembled a four-stroller caravan of dads and toddlers. The excursion wasn't without hiccups. My research on transportation was less rigorous than, say, Kelly's might've been, and we all missed a connecting bus that only ran once an hour. We also didn't plan for the problem of loading four strollers onto a single bus. And I lost a book I was in the middle of reading. But eventually we were walking through the woods on a gorgeous sunny day. We played on a see-saw, inspected a dragonfly, found a corkscrew ramp, checked out Lamborghini tractors, and petted a couple ponies. The kids ran around, traded snacks, and napped in shifts; the dads talked soccer, big game safaris, and global economics. It was an altogether nice time. For some reason, though, I only took my camera out once.