…in the spring…evergreen or deciduous?
How often have you hoped a promise would be fulfilled?
And, just what are all those connotations surrounding the word–promise–all the aura–all the magic?
Today as I looked at the above image, in real life, I was convinced that the promise of spring had been fulfilled–entrancingly fulfilled.
I looked and looked–the greens dark, the greens alive–then I remembered the questions about plants and design–evergreen or deciduous?
It is the mystery we all face…understanding…the landscape we all walk through…the strange bifurcation…spirit…material…search…discovery…and search again…and again…not sure…still looking…tired…still looking.
St James, the first disciple of Jesus to be martyred…somehow his body ended in Northern Spain…a landscape with a history of people that defies, that predates everything we know…the land influenced by people whose roots are mysterious–Basques, Berbers…
Why do people travel this landscape, the way of St James…the Camino de Santiago…the landscape of hope, of discovery?
Yeah sure, to tick a box…but the others…the others…the video below by an Irish Pilgrim captures the others, captures an essence of the search for discovery. It captures the thrill of hope in the journey through the landscape and it captures the melancholy sadness of arrival at the destination and still finding a mystery yet to solve.
That is our life.
And that is why I write landscape stories.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOMMl33Ot5Q?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
On a path within a landscape journey…and up ahead, around the corner…
Nobody truly knows just what may be around the next corner…can’t see, can’t hear, don’t know…such are our limitations.
Friday, 24Jan2014, I was, on foot, taking a landscape journey–a split second of which is in the above photograph.
As I took the photo, I thought just as we do not know what lies around the next corner at anytime, we do not know either the time of death or thereafter…but we put the best shine on it.
So I took the photograph, smiled and continued walking.
It was beautiful on the day…and the memories still are beautiful!
I like the essential lightness in this word: landscapeyness.
In real life, I find lightness both in landscapes and also in gardens. Among their many aspects, I like them for their landscapeyness.
Landscapes and gardens–this ultimate pair of two syllable words–each carrying an immeasurable gravitas buried within the burls of all human civilizations–each twisting and turning through the world’s cultures and around and through the time lines of human history–twisting and turning, forming and reforming, always in a deep harmony.
Can landscapeyness and deep harmony co-exist? Of course! Look at these images brimming with landscapeyness and deep harmony.
These images are SchnerenSchnit (German). SchnerenSchnit is scissors cut–the art and craft of cutting paper. It has been practiced in Swiss mountain villages before modern media, and continues on in some places still today. I have included these images of ScherenSchnit because they demonstrate the skeins, the threads, the cellulose, that connect and combine landscapeyness and deep harmony into an almost transcendental relationship between people and plants, gardens and landscapes.
Shelter, water, work, nurture, people, craft, landscape…
Forest, animals, people, nurture, rest, music, landscape…
Flowers, forest, animals, children, parents, play, nurture, landscape…
Flowers, forest, family, shelter, animals, people, nurture, landscape…
The tree of life…
Now why did we move to the city? What are we missing in the city?
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.
As I move toward the completion of my second landscape story, Crystal Vision, I have updated the novella’s story line.
Labyrinthine Mists is the landscape through which the main character moves.
Geo was from LA. He was a young and successful landscape architect; yet he sensed…an unease. He took an offer to work in Saudi Arabia, an excellent challenge where he would have exponentially larger responsibilities.
During his six years on the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia, his professional and social life evolved inside a bubble, a cultural bubble protecting him from uncertainty…until…the bubble burst.
He lost his tether to ‘reality’ and began a blind journey into a landscape labyrinth. A labyrinth by definition does not have an end; but Geo sensed…an obligation and something important to find. And so, he embarked upon an exploration of labyrinthine landscapes he had never before imagined.
Bonigen Alpabzug
What is urban landscape and what is public realm?
This is a September 2013 view of main street in the center of Bonigen, a Swiss town of roughly 2,000 people. It is a town that has been for centuries.
Every summer the Bonigen farmers take their cows on a journey to the high Alp ‘pastures’. The above view shows the festival of the cows’ return journey (Alpabzug) from the high Alps. The cows and other grazing animals are feted. Plants and flowers make up head dresses for the cows. And all the residents come to cheer for them as they are paraded down main street.
The urban landscape, the public realm overflows with landscape and agricultural realities–the realities of inter-relationships among people, plants, animals and landscape.
…music.
Most North Americans are overwhelmed by the convenience and connectivity of the various forms of public transport in Switzerland. It is an effectively interwoven network that begins at the airports and train stations where it is most dense. Then it gradually thins out as you travel higher into the mountains and further away from the cities.
At the final destination, you can find Swiss people in blissful contact with the landscape, as the following images demonstrate.
How much do you think access to this landscape pleasure is worth in any urban design?
Look at the faces of these people 2,250 meters above mean sea level…transcendental enjoyment if I have ever seen it! Music, people, landscape.
The landscape above
The landscape below
Alphorns
Alphorn painted details
Alphorn craftsmanship
Landscape, alphorns, people
Landscape, people, music
People and music
People and music
People in the landscape
Sometimes I get a chance to sit quietly, in the steep mountain sided lake basin known as the Brienzersee. I watch the clouds mysteriously emerge…and sometimes I watch them just as mysteriously disappear…in as much time as it took me to write this!
It is more than science, isn’t it?
Share your thoughts, please.
…writing in the 1820s Tales of the Alhambra, about the palace of the Alhambra:
“…externally it is a rude congregation of towers and battlements, with no regularity of plan or grace of architecture…giving little promise of the grace and beauty which prevail within.”
Might there be a design lesson hidden in that observation regarding something seen from a distance?
Might there be an essential outside vs inside experience?
Might there be seeing when the viewer is moving vs seeing when the viewer is still?
…outside? …inside?
