Tag Archives: Jungfrau Region

Vera…the truth

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…vera--the truth…But I walked and I looked… …finally under those lower forests on a clearing, on a brookside, I found one, then again and again, I found others–all shouting at me with the cheerfulness of spring yellow in the wild. Primula vera–the truth?

…too busy…I almost missed Spring…7…next…last

PS My helpful friends from the Alpen Garten at Schynige Platte have told me that it is not vera, it is elatior. But this spring it was vera to me…and I was elated!

Mountains start to breathe

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Meanwhile, back below the treeline, in the mixed forests, the mountains vent their steam…stuff is happening somewhere.

Mysterious…clouds…fog…what? Subtle changes in temperature and humidity…why? Beautiful…local…non-specific…can you feel that in your lungs? In your heart?

The air of the coming spring begins to fill…fill with a richness that only can be sensed inside the lungs.

And as freshly intoxicating as it may be, a look up the slope shows upland pastures still dead yellow, dead brown…still not yet returned from winter’s cold sleep.

…too busy…I almost missed Spring…6…next…last

…winter tries to make a comeback…

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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?

…too busy…almost missed Spring…2…last…next

…the last snow…

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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

Landscape…a passion, or?

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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)

How do humans fit in?

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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.

The Relinking Chain

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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.