SOOS abstraction

Do you wonder what I’m getting at with the title of this post? I hope so… Read on and you will see.

Photos presented in this post were taken at and inspired by SOOS, a national nature reserve that is situated just a few kilometres from Františkovy Lázně, the spa I wrote about in my last post. SOOS is a peat bog and fenland area that was declared the reserve in 1964.

You can get to know part of it by following a 1,2 kilometres long nature trail that takes you through the reserve and lets you see some of its marvels.

The trail goes across a dry lake bed that used to be full of salty mineral water. Remains of lake algae shells deposited at the bottom of the lake created a deep layer covered with white and yellow layers of precipitated mineral salts. It created a special micro landscape, they say it looks like a moonscape.

In the reserve, there are numerous outflows of mineral springs. Along the trail you can see for example the following Imperial spring, which has coloured the place where it comes to the surface in that wonderful orange. The spring water is drinkable.

I loved the tiles placed around the spring, they looked quite unusual and protected against slipping.

In several places at the end of the trail, pure carbon dioxide springs to the surface in so called moffets, mud volcanoes, and it’s quite fascinating to watch the little water pools bubbling with escaping gas. There were not many pools to watch though. This summer was very dry and the wetland was certainly much drier than usually.

It was very interesting to feel the atmosphere of the area and here I’m back at the title of my post. My perception of the place was influenced by seeing many abstract motifs and hopefully I was able to capture some of them in my photographs. I loved that SOOS abstraction…