Every farm, every pasture, often on the edge of town, in this Jungfrau region has a walnut tree, almost as ubiquitous as apple trees. That should tell you something about regional climate and history of local scale life and agriculture.
…spring frolic…a young light yellow mustard swaying in the breeze and an airy, sweet walnut green…together they dance and sing. Can you feel it? If not, go out in your own neighborhood and discover it.
I can’t deny how much this scene enlivened me. And I can’t deny that I share that enlivenment with my character, CJ, in Tangier Gardens.
In Tangier Gardens, CJ discovers for the first time, the enlivenment emanating from plants. Unfortunately, the landscape about him, assaults him, challenges him. How do these opposing forces re-align CJ and his goals?
Looking for something? First job? New job? The last time I was looking for a job…
Looking for something? Need to put food on the table?
I had an open field. I had a level playing field. But…no job.
No result. In the distance I saw a forest—a well-known forest, everyone knows it, it’s the forest known as the ‘can’t tell the forest from the trees’ forest. I’d been there many times. But I needed a job, so I walked toward it.
That’s when something strange happened. I was pushing my way through a shrub thicket between the field and the forest when I heard… it wasn’t a voice; it wasn’t music… but something in between. I paused and examined the surrounding shrubs. One caught my attention.
Did I hear something?
It was still winter, but this shrub had flowers. I had heard of it before in my horticulture classes. In Latin I learned its name—Hamamelis virginiana. But it’s common name intrigued—witch hazel. I looked deeply into the bright yellow spindly flowers. Woody citric scent that had a floating sweetness with rusty tinges. The strange sweetness pulled me closer to one flower—as I examined—I heard what I should do to get my job; but I didn’t know it yet.
Flower fragrances—can they hypnotize? That’s how I felt as I walked home. I went online to do some research. Hamamelis sp. — a lot of them—virginiana, vernalis, intermedia and a slew of hybrids in the US. And the common name—witch hazel. Witch hazel? I did more research and learned that this plant had a long history of medicinal uses—the leaves, the stems, the seeds, the bark—the list of uses was too long to follow.
Botany–the ethnobotanical threshold.
That was before I saw a cross reference, a link to… I never thought about it—Druidry! The native Americans and the European Celtics—the druids—had another range of uses. Uses that never were covered in my university horticulture studies.
Before I knew it, I was deep into reading about the Hamamelis sacred tree profile and its magic, medicine, and mythology. Deep. I was in deep! Liniments, poultices, teas… and other uses smoking, dowsing, water witching and way-finding.
Way-finding caught my attention because I was looking for a way to find my next job. Was I on some kind of BS coincidence or was I really on the threshold of a new path—a new journey?
That is what I was thinking while I read more. ‘Witch hazel brings light and hope into dark places and dark times. Witch hazels help find things.’ My research told me that this shrub is important to work with if I am on a journey, seeking a new path, or trying to find my way through uncertain times.
‘Work with’ a plant? What the hell does that mean? Should I even take that seriously?
I went back outside and walked once again through the thicket of witch hazel on the edge of the forest. Without trying, I found myself next to the Hamamelis flower that, if I was to use my new language, the flower that tried to work with me.
What did I sense… something touching my heart? Time for a new path, a new job.
Writing—writing? There is a lot of time and space and energy between landscape architecture and druidry, yet both work daily with plants. As I mulled through the differences, as I examined the gulf, I saw they well equipped me to write about it.
Then I wrote Tangier Gardens. I set up CJ as a traditional landscape architecture university student who had a fondness for plants. But when he went to Tangier for his term abroad design study, he encountered experiences in the north west African landscape that caused him to re-evaluate what was the essence of landscape architecture.
CJ had to re-think the relations between human culture and the landscape. He had to rethink the existential realities that linked humans and plants.
Was CJ a landscape architect or a druid? That is for readers to decide as they follow CJ’s Tangier experience. Learn more about Tangier Gardens and CJ on my Amazon book page.
In 1911, when John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was 19, he travelled on foot from Interlaken to Zermatt with a group of 11 companions, and saw the Lauterbrunnen waterfalls, the Swiss Alpine peaks and the Aletsch glacier, all of which were reproduced in his own drawings in his books.
But what really started his creative fire? And what could start your creative fire?
It can’t be a package tour itinerary, can it?
It can’t be a must see bucket list can it?
If it isn’t the overwhelming beauty of the landscape.
If it isn’t the peaceful quiet of the landscape.
If it isn’t the rich bounty of the landscape.
Then what is it?
All the senses at once consumed—the path to the pineal—and then what? Inspired? How did that happen? not photos, not movies, not virtual reality—but in real life something happened to Tolkien and something can happen to any of us.
Then what was, what is it? Not only was it what he saw. But he felt something—something that inspired him to a masterful effort. We can all see it; but just seeing is not enough.
We can access that spark—but the process is mysterious. How to find that door of inspiration in the landscape—that portal to exceptional effort, exceptional achievement.
Some say the harder we look the more difficult to encounter the reveal. The reveal that refreshes.
In Tangier Gardens, protagonist CJ defined that moment of inspiration in the garden, in the landscape as a portal. A portal.
I am certain Tolkien crossed a portal in the Jungfrau landscape. After which he was never the same. He took the portal experience and over years elaborated on it and shared it through his books and illustrations.
That originating experience remains in these Jungfrau Region mountain landscapes—but not everyone finds that magic portal. Some say it is the work of the pineal gland.
Drive it? Fly it? Take the train? Ride a bike?
Walk it. In the quiet of walk the portal may more easily reveal itself. When that light shines, there is no mistaking it. Can’t be seen, can’t be heard; but communication happens—like instant trance—beyond meditation.
Read how CJ discovers portals in Tangier Gardens. Find the portals for yourself.
Take your part in one of life’s greatest mysteries.
Geographic information science says life is raster and even if you make it vector, the closer you examine the more it becomes raster–so we do our best.
Can you see it on the images? Snow is white, forest is black. Where is the ‘snow line‘?
We don’t have those North American attention grabbing sugar maples or even their cousins around here.
Rising out of the butterscotch sea. From the lower valley pastures to the mid mountain mixed deciduous and evergreen up to the near mountain summit pure coniferous forests. Autumn calls.Some might say how drab! Yellows and browns. C’mon man. But honestly…these yellows and browns in our landscape offer something more…a flavor…a sweetness. A pleasurable sweetness. A lasting enjoyment that comes…from a flavor to a taste…to become softly in our ear…a kind word. Extrasensual.I like it–like a butterscotch candy…the flavor lasts and lasts.
I can not turn away from my evergreen source of inspiration. It is a landscape that continuously surprises me with its overwhelming awe, its raw power and a beauty that leaves me speechless —harmonic beauty. And it always makes me ask questions–about transportation infrastructure, water resources, land management. I love it. Refreshing it is.
The big, broad spreading beech. These are very uncomfortable times. Do I fight or become a medical experiment? We all have that choice, or do we? I take walks–and I find shelter–like this beech tree on a river bank. It says shelter. Relief. Relief? Relief from what? Why do I need shelter? Twenty months of health statistics anomalies. And I haven’t seen anyone collapse on the street since that Wuhan play actor almost two years ago. Yet everything I read or see on TV says I should be part of big pharma/political experiments. Yeah, I need relief. And yeah, that beech tree offered it. I looked long, hard and lovingly at that strong beech and its broad spreading protective canopy. I felt the shelter; and for a long moment I felt relief from the non-stop tyrannical tensions.I pushed on. I walked further and further and became awestruck. A landscape vista worked its magic on me. The beauty so overwhelmed that I needed to sit. Dizzy with beauty I had become. More relief–this time with inspiration.
I had to re-post this because it sings in my heart–source of evergreen inspiration.
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
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.
Yodelers in the Jungfrau Region of the Berner Oberland in Switzerland–in the yodel, a human can hear and feel the landscape.
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.
What is a nature prescription? Why do you need it? Political or health albatross around your neck? A walk out past the edge of town?…just like Dancing in the Moonlight. Take a break.
Should your ‘nature prescription’ be more like taking aspirin or Dancing in the Moonlight? Take a walk in a place like this–that’s a nature prescription. Aspirin? Dancing in the Moonlight? It’s both and more. You’ve got to go beyond the edge of town or village–outside that downtown buzz–and breathe deeply–let your walls down–open all your senses. And the portals will open.
How can I get free of this stinking political and health fear-stuffed albatross?
Suppose this page is about you…and suppose you are wound up tighter than a drum by the tension of world wide and local politics and health. This page is your wayfinder.
THE PURPOSE OF THE BLOG AND ALL MY WRITING is to assist you the visitor to begin taking steps along a path toward discovering the regenerative existential cures to be freely found in plants, gardens and the landscape.
THE FIRST STEP is what could be called ‘nature prescriptions’–calibrated doses of time outside. Take a walk. But does the walk heal? What actually happens? What is on the path that takes you on a journey? Where do landscape journeys take you?
And why even take that path and that journey?
A walk, a journey just for the landscape?–heh, I know what you are thinking–we all know what landscape is, right? Same old, same old, right?
The landscape can be a private cocoon to rest the restless.
On the walk you may weave dreams full of surprise and delight yielding true moments of repose.
It can be a journey to unwind, to regenerate, to reconnect with inner peace, to nest away from the daily hustle and bustle.
What’s missing from this photo? If you want to take that first regenerative walk on a landscape journey, here is what should be missing. Mobile, and any digital intrusion, mechanical noise from the city, from autos, any miscellaneous connectivity kit–that’s right don’t bring modern noise with you. Missing out all th is an essential part of your nature prescription.
