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)
Landscape, humans, animals…how do the humans fit in? Is there a preferred way for interaction between humans and animals in the landscape? In the Berner Oberland Jungfrau Region this photo shows an autumnal parade in the village, celebrating the return of the animals from the upper alps, the upper pastures, to their home barns.
The animals are celebrated, applauded and cheered by the villagers twice a year. In the early summer when they leave the village heading up to mountain pastures and then in the fall when they return.
The animals wear decorative headdresses made by humans from pasture and woodland wild flowers and leaves.
I wonder if the energy expended by humans and animals in the landscape, combined with human attitudes of service, duty and reverence, add together to help generate a healthy feeling in the landscape–despite the avalanches, despite the rock and landslides, despite the flash floods.
Today, after seven hundred years of humans managing forests, pastures, animals, villages and themselves, this Berner Oberland Jungfrau Region landscape attracts visitors from every corner of the world to have their breath taken away by the actual beauty and the aura this landscape brings to all.
For seven hundred years the local Berner Oberland farmers have organized, and agreed how to manage this mountain landscape, rich in water and soil, but limited in arable land.
The food chain of Berner Oberland sustainable agriculture has worked for nearly a millennium.
Now over the last century, the advent of tourism–itself is a mark of increasing affluence–has thrown a bunch of new challenges at these farmers. They continue to work through them.
But the landscape–look at it–it is cared for–the animals are cared for–it is beautiful and beautifully managed. This image depicts the essence of human stewardship of the landscape.
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.
When I look at these Berner Oberland landscapes–filled with fresh water, snow, ice, I am amazed by their inherent wealth and health. I am awed by their physical presence.
For decades I lived around that Empty Quarter arid sand desert of my most recent posts; but I needed refreshment, I needed recharge, so I regularly retreated to these water rich mountains.
These two geographies, one lifeless and the other full of life, put me in contact with the extreme ends of the water continuum of life.
Landscape astounds me.
Landscape journeys enthrall me.
French LandArt2014 Entry captures from where our roots come and to where our roots go…
On my way to the Gletscherschlucht, between the Eiger and the Shreckhorn, I found in the forest the existing remnants of Grindelwald’s LandArt 2014.
LandArt2014 asks the artists to find their raw materials in the adjacent forest itself. Then the art goes through the transitional cycles of time and decomposition. Some of the 14 entries had already merged with the forest. Others were still visible. I liked the one above by a team from France.
Pascal Imhof has produced an HD Virtual Reality of the French entry–and from this link you can see VRs of all LandArt2014 entries.
These are the people responsible for the French LandArt 2014 Entry.
