Tag Archives: landscape

Cheesed

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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.

…stars of the show…

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.

…observing the decorated cows…

The parade through the village reached the festival ground where the residents gathered to appreciate the cows with a party.

…feted cows…

Village families make close relationships with the cows.

…head dresses…

Farmers make decorative head dresses for the cows.

…craftsmanship…

Decorative craftsmanship demonstrates human respect paid to the cows.

…raclette on ruchbrot…

Open-faced raclette cheese sandwiches enjoyed by more than a hundred people.

…party time…

The cheese from this summer has been brought for distribution to the village residents.

…un morceau s'il vous plait…

Each farmer has summer cheese displayed and ready for taste testing.

…good times…

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. 🙂

Cross Cultural

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Lived lots of years in foreign countries–foreign cultures.

Cross-cultural are experiences in which I have been face-to-face with people and behaviours I did not understand and often did not agree.

…as opposed to multi-cultural which is theory only.

In my work as a landscape architect in those foreign countries and foreign cultures, I had to build major projects. Had to reach workable agreements in difficult cross-cultural conditions. Learned so very much from so many different people.

The links below track some of my cross-cultural journeys.

They are all HD, all less than one minute long, and they are all growing from the Empty Quarter, the Rub al Khali.

ArabiaFelix

Rub al Khali Enigma: the Empty Quarter in the Arabian Peninsula, what it is.

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Atlantis

Dreams: how to get from dreams to fiction to reality, Atlantis Dubai 2008.

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Qasr

Empty Quarter: transforming cross-cultural realties, harsh environments into restful shelter, Qasr al Sarab 2010.

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GolfAcademy

A Golf Academy in the Empty Quarter?

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Listen to ‘Mys Alpli’

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Edelwyss-Starnen sing the last verse of Mys Alpli. High in the Berner Oberland, an alp is a field, a pasture, a productive piece of mountain land where animals can be grazed. Thus in the background of this you can hear the bells of the sheep, goats and cows. Available at itunes.apple.com/us/artist/jodelg…rnen/id329166348

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Mid July in the Berner Oberland Jungfrau Region–it is that time of year when the highest alps receive the animals for the ‘spring’ grasses.

I met a researcher in a Stubbe last week. He was researching linkages between humans and the landscape. He shared with me the following photos of yodelers.

…silvery…

Yodelers in the Jungfrau Region of the Berner Oberland in Switzerland–in the yodel, a human can hear and feel the landscape.

…silver…

Yodelers demonstrate their respect for the landscape in all aspects of their lives–arts, crafts–and the richness of the detail recalls the richness of their feelings for the landscape. Stewards, custodians of the landscape–that is only the beginning in the Jungfrau Region of the Berner Oberland.

 

He noted that these yodelers are not hired professionals or foreign workers. They are humans whose families have lived in this landscape for centuries.

He posited that there are rootlets of some strange consistency that transcend the lifetimes of humans. Those rootlets, he said, were channels through which a music travels from the landscape through the voices of the yodelers.

Each verse of a song glorifies a different aspect of the relationship between humans and the landscape. And each chorus…well…the chorus is the landscape.

Pasture Waves

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…olfactory…

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.

…sweeping waves…

Closer, pastures rolling up and rolling across the slopes, the fields. My eyes and nose battle to receive their outpouring.

…beautiful complexities…

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.

…Clou…d…s…

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…from the earth…

…the changing of the airs…

There are days when I look across the valley and see flows of clouds, flows of clouds I do not understand. Right side of the brain…nil. Left side of the brain…nil.

Yet, I am entranced by the beauties of the flows…

Other days, I wake up, eager to see those flows…and I find…what might as well be infinitely far away…something in that distance…all by itself…sigh.

the ether the sky

…and it begins…

I sigh confronted by beauty I can not fathom. Clouds…if I can not grasp them in my hands, how can I describe them? How can I write about them?

Suggestions?