The name says it all.
End of summer;
But, a last breath of spring-like beauty.
The name says it all.
End of summer;
But, a last breath of spring-like beauty.
This is a discussion, a debate, an argument that never fades away.
Today, on a walk, I came across these beautifully flowering plants on the edge of a parking lot. Made me think. Made me remember all the discussions, debates and arguments with colleagues and government authorities.
But then I thought that any time someone plants seeds or ‘makes’ a garden, it is a statement that says yes, I have free time. Yes, I have disposable income. We could easily infer that such a person is ‘well-off’. Nice place to be…well-off in a garden, isn’t it?
Too much thinking for me. I’ll go back to my walk.
What are landrace clouds? I made it up. Combination of words to describe the reality of cloud appearance in my neighborhood.
My neighborhood. According to the Swiss National Meteorological office, my Swiss neighborhood is the Northern Alps, the north facing slopes of the northernmost range of Alps in Switzerland. Using more common tourist and environmentally friendly vocabulary, my neighborhood is in the Jungfrau Region of the Berner Oberland around Interlaken. I live in the north-facing drainage basin of the famous Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau mountain triumvirate.
Now all that aside, over my years of walking this neighborhood, I have noticed that barely observable, minimal fluctuations in temperature, humidity, pressure and wind create quite dramatic formation and dissolution of very low level clouds. Please do not confuse them with fog. For a patient viewer, a dance reveals itself. And where there is dance, there is music. Not in astronomical time, but in real time. See it. Feel it. Hear it.
Unmistakeable to a person on foot.
So for me, landrace clouds are very specific, locally generated occurrences. That is my starting point. That is real. Then the fiction begins. I call it fiction because of the reality that what we call ‘fixed’ or ‘settled’ science is not really fixed or settled or permanent. I like working and writing on the edge of the fixed because every edge is fuzzy and invites exploration, as do these landrace cloud phenomena.
I ask myself, what really happens at the point where a cloud begins its formation in touch with the earth? My response is a bit alchemical, a bit old school. I theorise that point as the interaction of earth, air, water…kind of special already, no? But what about ether? What happens at the moment of generation and the final moment of dissolution?
So, I go hunting in my neighborhood for generation points of landrace clouds. Following are eleven images from recent forays.
All of the above represent a ‘typical’ walk in my neighborhood. And that is why fiction is just too close to fact.
At 600 meters above sea level, early May in the Bernese Highlands, grassland pastures are full with first wild flowers. Imagine in the air, the fragrance of fresh green pasture spring.