It does not take much imagination to think of what might happen if you were caught unawares out here without your bog-shoes. Today, thankfully, the marsh is crossed by a wood-plank walkway which ensures most visitors can keep their feet – and every other part of their anatomy – dry, but it only requires a tentative prod to either side to realise just how wet and unstable the landscape is.
As the rain begins to fall we retreat to the wooden path and follow it back to the edge of the forest. Aspen, oak and birch trees provide some limited shelter, while the shimmering water that shrouds their roots is stippled by raindrops.
This is beaver country and we soon find proof of the fact. An aspen trunk hangs weirdly among the branches of its neighbours. About half a metre from the ground it has been gnawed through with conical precision – its stump standing out pale in the shadows, like a freshly sharpened pencil.
‘Beavers fell lots of trees,’ says Martsoo, ‘and when they do it fills the rivers and waterways with debris – that provides shelter for fish and helps to protect the whole ecosystem.’
Life hasn’t always been easy for these charismatic rodents in this part of Estonia, though. They were hunted to extinction in the 19th century, and were only reintroduced in 1982. Today, there are believed to be more than 140 beavers within the park and numbers have to be controlled by culling. The best way to see them is to take to the water in a canoe, but with the rain sheeting down that doesn’t seem a sensible option for us – especially as any right-thinking beaver would surely be tucked up snugly inside its lodge by now.
Instead, we continue through the soaking forest, the sound of falling rain broken occasionally by a cuckoo calling cheerfully somewhere in the distance. After a while we emerge into a meadow, where swallows zip above long grass. Under the lintel of a workshop, two heavily bearded men are working on a wooden boat. It is perhaps five metres long, with a pointed prow and the pair are hollowing it out with adzes – a type of axe. The technique looks ancient – and it is.
‘These were the boats that people used to use in this region until only a few decades ago,’ says Martsoo. ‘It is the kind of boat you see on every continent – made from a hollowed-out log, then widened.’ The technique very nearly died out, but in the 1990s two of the last remaining boat-builders were encouraged to share their skills with younger people and courses in canoe building still take place here.
Further on, we come to a narrow wooden suspension bridge over a river. The planks are slippery. The bridge wobbles. With some relief I reach the other side. A man is waiting to cross. He looks as though he has walked out of the opening scenes of the film Gladiator – I am starting to wonder if beards aren’t compulsory in Soomaa.
Beneath his pelt he smiles… ‘The old bridge used to be much more fun,’ he says in perfect English, his voice giving away the fact he is younger than his beard originally suggests.
‘More wobbly?’
He blows out his cheeks and raises his eyebrows in a universal expression of agreement that roughly translates as: ‘I should say so.’
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