Author Archives: eflaherty

Mountains, civilized? Ha!

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…never…

Mountains, civilized? Ha!
Not these behemoths!

Since written history and before, the Bernese Oberlands have frightened and inspired humans, including Goethe, Byron, Hesse, Mann, Strauss, Schiller, Mendelssohn, Doyle, Haller, Hodler, Savrasov, Koenig, Bierstadt, Wolf, Fearnley…the list goes on and on…and thousands of others who have followed their footsteps.

It is that human consensus which has inspired local people, evolving from agricultural dependency into the modern world, to build technically complex, electrically powered, narrow gauge cogwheel trains up the Bernese Oberlands mountain slopes to what is known today in the Swiss Alps as the Top of Europe.

So, now, humans climb these incredibly steep slopes, sitting on padded seats, with central heating, enjoying visual delights through floor to ceiling polarized glass windows–civilized access to the not nearly civilized mountains.

…what time…where…

Access–maybe just a tiny bit civilized.

 

Just be glad to be here…

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEdiKZuwoGE&w=560&h=315]

I’ve been writing a landscape story titled, The 23 Club. Above, I have summarized it in a five minute clip.

In this story an American expatriate landscape architect confronts the strange multi-cultural realities of Arabian Peninsula work. Those social peculiarities layer with the powerful presence of the Empty Quarter landscape…the Empty Quarter, an enigmatic sand desert which, alone by its very presence, negates life.

The multi-media clip opens a window on the physical geography and cultural issues that swirl about the story–the construction of an iconic five star destination resort in that oil-rich, sand desert which, until recently, had been populated only by the transient Bedu.

If you are attracted to ethnobotany or plants, gardens and landscapes and have the wonder; but you do not have the time or money to travel to the Arabian Peninsula for these, then, just be glad to be here.

Pop-Up City Centers

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…got a room?

…Pop-Up City Center…

I slept well. I dreamt deep.

When I opened my eyes…it was hard to focus…near and far…both fuzzy. Then the foreground cleared and I could see in the distance…across the broad green pastures…I saw the city center.

It had developed over time, drawing resources and energy from the sun, the earth and water–all the while transforming those flows into new forms, new shelters.

The shelters were populated by all diversities of living entities with energy flows, day after day, night after night, until…until…like a Roman settlement in North Africa, they just no longer could sustain neither the energy flows, nor the diversities of living entities.

And the next day, the sun rose; and I was home before the sun set.

Irish Roots

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…must be seen…

…Irish roots work magic in the forest…

I walked through the forest. Neither the date, nor the day mattered. It was in the north. It was in the mountains. Spruce forest. Densely packed, tall trees, more than 100 feet each.

I walked a ridge in that forest. The canopy sheltered. I wasn’t cold. Somewhere, way up there, was sun. Thin, narrow, fractured beams twinkled and sparkled near my feet.

Delicate cloud edges whisped. They came close…on the edges of forming or dissipating or both…here and there…from time to time.

I was tired from walking and climbing. I looked for a place to sit. My Irish roots have always worked magic for me in forests. So it was today when I was invited to sit down and take the shelter of a mushroom.

The ground was soft and the mushroom stem gently molded itself to my spine and rib cage. I was comfortable. My breathing became easy. It slowed. The rhythm eased my eyelids shut.

Landscape Architecture Corollaries

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Try this.

The next time you step outdoors to take a walk, imagine you see indoors and outdoors according to these Landscape Architecture Corollaries:

Corollary 1. In the beginning there was one: landscape.  Landscape harbored danger for humans.

Corollary 2. Humans constructed shelters.  Then there were two: landscape, and, the shelters in the landscape.

Corollary 3. And today still, humans essentially move through the landscape from shelter to shelter.

Corollary 4. Architecture is shelter.

Corollary 5. Landscape is everything else in which the shelters sit.

Corollary 6. Landscape Architecture is the dramatic craft concerning the quality of experience, during the movement of humans from shelter to shelter through the landscape.

Then when you come back indoors, ask yourself about the quality of your walk, according to those Landscape Architecture Corollaries.

Might be fun?!

 

 

Can’t find my way home

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…can't find my way home…

The various clouds appear, disappear, move and change at many different speeds simultaneously–and today they hid the giants of Jungfrau, Monch and Eiger–normally visible in this frame.

I am working on a story, The Orient Express, whose beginning and dénouement occur in the mountains surrounding Mürren in Switzerland.

This landscape inspires me because its very presence is mysterious–a consuming presence that forces me to interact with an elusive and overwhelming mystery…without beginning, without end…

Landscapes such as this are beyond my words.