This was all he had hoped for. Tom had been planning this trip for years and now his dream was becoming true. Tom had always loved hiking and he had always wanted to learn how to survive in the nature all by himself. He had learned survival skills and he had studied herbalism and also history, especially how people lived and how they did things. Tom had always also thought about how he could do things without the help of modern equipment. He had practiced his skills when the opportunity came and he knew for example how to melt iron and make something out of it.

But this was his moment. He had finally gotten everything planned and finalized. His service in the military had ended three months earlier and he had everything he thought he would need. He had a full year ahead of him and he was going to spend it living by himself in the Lapland. He had inherited a big chunk of land in northeastern Finland from his grandfather several years earlier. At first he was going to sell the land because he thought that he could invest the money somewhere else, where it would earn more than in the woods. Growing trees was a slow but sure way to make money. Wood was always needed, but it took about 60-80 years (in Lapland) for a tree to grow from a sapling to a full-grown tree. Then Tom thought that this really was his chance to make his dream come true. He would take tools, seeds, food, weapons etc. with him and go to live on his forest for at least a year. He would try to survive without any help from the outside and also try to replace the tools he would take with him with tools made by him. He would build himself a small one or two-room house and make a field and plant some of the seeds he would take with him. He would spend the summer and fall fishing, hunting and collecting food for the winter.

Now Tom was walking to the place where he intended to build his house. He had a backpack, which weighted about 27 kilograms, and he was dragging sled that contained the rest of his belongings. He knew that the sled would be damaged from being dragged on the ground, but he knew that he could easily repair it before he would be returning back to civilization. He did not hurry since his load was very heavy and he knew that he still had four or five day trip before he would reach his destination. The weather forecast had promised good weather for the first three days before he left, but he did not care about the weather. He knew that he would have to experience all kinds of weather during his year.

Tom stopped around two in the afternoon for a while and boiled some water to make some soup out of a bag. He ate the soup with some sandwiches he had made in the morning. After a shot rest he continued walking and enjoying beautiful spring day and the nature around him. The snow had melted away and the ground had dried already. In the evening Tom stopped walking two hours before sundown when he noticed a good spot and set up his tent. He had excellent two-layer tent that was waterproof and also very light. One of its best features was that it could be set up in the rain without getting the inside of the tent wet. There were many two-layer tents on the market that were waterproof, but you had to set up the inner part first and then set the waterproof outer tent on top of the inner part. If you would set up such tent in rain, you would have a wet tent to sleep in and that is no fun.

The second day passed also nicely, beautiful weather and Tom made good progress. He thought that if he would progress as smoothly, he could get to his destination in four days in stead of five. In the morning of his third day Tom noticed that the weather was changing. There were dark clouds on the western sky (weather fronts tended to travel from west to east during this time of year). Tom took out his raingear and also made a thermos full of soup ready in case it would rain during his lunch-break. He started walking and watched as the storm built up. By his lunch-break it still had not rained. The sky was almost black, so dark were the clouds. The birds and animals were totally quiet. The whole nature was waiting for the storm to start. Tom knew that he would be better to find some shelter, but he was now traveling across higher ground and there were only small trees that did not offer any protection. Tom ate his lunch quickly and continued searching shelter from the coming onslaught of the storm.

Just when he heard first roar of thunder he saw narrow valley between two mountains. It would protect him from the worst winds even if the valley did not protect him from the rain. Tom picked up his pace and just as he was entering the valley first drops of the rain came down. The storm was very violent. It was actually the worst storm Tom had ever been while he was hiking. The rain was so hard he could see only a few meters and there were flashes of lightning every few seconds. Tom kept struggling forward, hoping to find some trees or big rocks for shelter. He was not afraid of the lightning because he was between two mountains that would draw the lightning, but he needed shelter and quickly.

Just then he saw some big stones on both sides of him and a bigger stone in front of him. They were all like stone spikes thrust into the ground, but at least he could use his sled and backpack to build some kind of lean-to against the stone. Tom rushed forward, but just as he reached the stone in front of him, he noticed that the stone was actually in the center of a circle of stones. This set up reminded him of something he had seen earlier, but he did not have time to remember exactly what it was as lightning struck one stone on the circle. Lightning is supposed to last very short time, but Tom saw that the arcs of lightning extended from the stone where it had struck and reached the next stones in the circle on both sides of the first stone. Then the arcs continued until they met on the opposite side. Tom realized that he was inside the ring of lightning, but just as the realization hit him, the world seemed to explode and Tom fell unconscious.