…escaped from that procrastination flu, you know the illness…
got too much to do today, I’ll take a walk tomorrow,
besides it’s only the first week of autumn.
I escaped yesterday…
…to the autumnal heights…
Finally, I escaped…
Tag Archives: Jungfrau Region
Ephemeral?
Frost…can there be anything more ephemeral than frost?
…ummm…our presence on earth?
🙂 Let me try again. The humour in this reality?
Once more…the pleasure as I observed the morning frost on that wood bench in the Schynige Platte Botanical Alpine Garden? Is that better? 🙂
Sweet pleasure. Ephemeral. Always sought. Always welcomed. Always missed.
And then I stood up, took a long, slow, deep breath, and turned around…I understood.
Cheesed
I was born in and grew up in large cities–Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland. With that big-city-supermarket-only detachment, I still look at farm life as a Disneyland attraction. City soft hands vs farm rough hands–same mentality.
But last week I, by chance, attended an Alpabzug held in a village in the Berner Oberland, Jungfrau Region, Switzerland.
Alpabzug und Chästeilet! says with exclamatory enthusiasm, we are having a party to celebrate our cows’ return home from the Alpine summer pastures and their cheese distribution.
The Alpabzug is a village festival where the people in the village come out on the main street to a parade of cows that welcomes the cows back home after their season up in the mountains. It is a jolly time.
The parade, led by trychlers (bell-ringers) finishes on the edge of town for a day long festival where people take photos of the cows’ head-dresses, enjoy each others’ company, jodelers, traditional music, eat chäsbraetli (raclette on bread) and buy the cheese made that year on the mountain.
The parade through the village reached the festival ground where the residents gathered to appreciate the cows with a party.
Village families make close relationships with the cows.
Farmers make decorative head dresses for the cows.
Decorative craftsmanship demonstrates human respect paid to the cows.
Open-faced raclette cheese sandwiches enjoyed by more than a hundred people.
The cheese from this summer has been brought for distribution to the village residents.
Each farmer has summer cheese displayed and ready for taste testing.
This season’s cheese, muetschli, for sale at 22CHF/kg is sold alongside jellies and jams made from local fruits and berries.
I like how the production and consumption of food is an intimate part of village life. I am amazed that it is still occurring as a village event—not a tourist event.
In my idealistic interpretation, I see the people thanking the cows for the milk given to produce the cheese that will be eaten throughout the wintertime.
What is the way it is said—local food by and for local people. 🙂
Enzian::your choice
No Entry…Gentiana asclepiadea
Enter At Your Own Risk…Gentiana asclepiadea
What might you find inside? Only you can know. 🙂
Your path…
Your path is in front of you.
A new path on your journey. Discover what happens to you at the edges of the clouds.
Take the path. Explore. Discover. It’s free. 🙂
The clues, the journey…
Someone prepared for the journey…er…or a long trip…
…with, along the way to autumn…pearls of the woods.
And, it is never twice the same. Never.
Place holder
Locus iste–place holder is a place holder.
And looming…
…just beyond the edge of the meadow, in the dark, thick and ancient forest, is the history of everything you never wanted to know.
But fear not. Just start walking.
Facials?
…or too much time…
I’ve got too much time on my hands—it’s the only way I can explain this stretched metaphor where the skin on one’s face and plant cover on the earth are equated.
If plants are the skin, the face of the earth, then…
The sky, the earth, the clouds and water combine to give the most unique of deep and revitalizing facial treatments to the plants.
And afterwards…all are glowing…absolutely glorious…everyone is smiling!
Happy?
🙂
Pasture Waves
From a distance, it’s hard to see, but the waves carry it in the air…from that huge bowl of a valley…the pastures.
Closer, pastures rolling up and rolling across the slopes, the fields. My eyes and nose battle to receive their outpouring.
Invisible micro-whisps rising, swirling…they enter my nose, uninvited, confusing my sense of beauty with olfactory complexities; but then my receptors are overtaxed and I can receive no more—so I look and my eyes gradually suffer the same fate.
Why are these pleasures time-stamped? Am I being protected from following some forbidden sensual path into the home of these glorious plants?
Just a question. Because I will visit these pastures again tomorrow and for a brief moment share their waves of ecstasies.