The snow shrinks back, it creeps uphill leaving behind a wet death–soaked yellow and brown grasses which had long before succumbed to winter’s cold grip.
But winter tries to make a comeback. The snow descends, lower and lower–winter tries vainly to re-establish its deathly grip…but I wonder, is it death, or is it purity? When about winter, how can the deaths of so many plants be so beautiful to behold when covered in white?
All white. Is it purity or are my eyes influenced by my hopes and dreams?
I almost missed…Spring: the last snow…
We all have been busy in the northern hemisphere as winter expired into spring–I too, have been busy–so much so that I almost missed that winter into spring transition–so here begins a series of transition images from these Alpine slopes that capture that transition.
The roots are churning–heat is on the way. The surface above the roots is melted–but I don’t hear anything.
…too busy…almost missed Spring…1…next
It may be a passion trying to find fertile ground, before it takes root. But then as it takes root, a strange transition occurs–passion into obsession–the roots go wild, they travel hard and fast and far…the obsession grows…and then what?
Berner Oberland: a humid, temperate, arable soil forest that I first experienced in real life in the 1960s, and it has been a landscape destination for me every decade since.
Rub al Khali: an arid, tropical, topsoil free, sand desert that I first experienced as, if you will permit me, a mesmerizing augmented reality in David Lean’s ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. That was also in the 1960s in the London West End. It became a landscape mystery I have explored every decade since.
Throughout my professional landscape architectural career, I have over and over, walked, drove, read, smelled, heard, felt–explored the above landscapes…they live inside me–they have taken root. They are growing.
From these distinctive landscapes has emerged a landscape obsession, an infatuation that can only be satiated by giving life to landscape stories, fictional stories that derive from personal experience, stories that endeavor to explain those landscape experiences which are…beyond words.
My first landscape story is The 23 Club, and it does unbundle those two landscape images above, revealing…(to be continued)
I was walking along pastures this weekend and noticed melted snow beneath tree canopies.
Even in the winter, the tree is working.
See the heat generated by the root mass.
It is the late fall work.
After the thrill of the fall color blaze–it is time to prepare the veg garden for winter sleep.
It is the last effort to make the soil right, the beds right for the coming of winter and the following spring.
Am I wrong thinking of this as small scale stewardship of the land?
Mini-meadow in the lawn–heart pounding variety–spring promise in early April.
Or, both and…
All my life I have seen cool weather grasses from Chicago to Detroit to Boston to the UK to Belgium; but I have never seen like I see in these photos– the Thun and Brienz lakes area of Switzerland.
Everyone’s house has a very small yard which usually includes a vegetable garden, fruit tree or two, flower garden and a flat trimmed lawn area.
In the spring the usually flat trimmed lawn area reveals this just opening array of wild flowers–kind of mini-meadow like.
People cut around these bouquets of wild flowers until the flowering is finished, then the lawns are fully cut.
Next year the wild flowers return. Both lawns and meadows, as I see it.
Anybody seen something similar?
Cool season grass, early April in northern hemisphere following a steadily mild winter.
Interlaken, Switzerland, in the Hohematte, looking East
Inspirational mountains…settled by humans longer than the written record…
Nevertheless the human landmark for more than eight hundred years in this inspirational landscape is a tribute to God. This piece of land and the human shelters built there still, today in 2013, remind all of the human existential questions that stir in the landscape…mysteries to solve.
Crystal Vision is a landscape story. It is a novella, literary fiction.
The past reaches for today
In Crystal Vision, George Moleson, an emerging professional, leaves his landscape architecture roots in Southern California, to build his international career, becoming a key person on a huge new town project located just near the Tropic of Cancer, on the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia.
After six cosseted years on that project, a quick succession of personal and professional events batter George. They untether him; and he embarks into the labyrinthine mists of landscapes…landscapes the nature of he had never ever imagined.
Read Crystal Vision preface and the ten Episodes’ summaries.
From Bern to Bernese Oberlands Jungfrau Region
Mountains, Plants, Water, Sky
Humans in the Mountains
Then please tell me if you like it or have any questions about it.
Thank you for your time and interest in the landscape.
