AUSTRIA

LAND OF MANY TREASURES

Pastel coloured houses all in a row.

Collections of medieval treasures: large suits of armor, a small house made of wood shavings, coral-boxes representing the nativity, and peep-show paintings of dwarves. 

Flower-pots brimming with red geraniums.

Snow covered mountains and waterfalls.

Cows roaming free with bells on, and a museum of bells - the oldest in the world.

Some of the brightest names to grace our species: Gregor Mendel, Empress Maria Theresa, Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Mozart, Erwin Schrödinger, Sigmund Freud, and Christian Doppler.

Churches of pink and white, and fiddly gold filigree.

All manner of pastries, strudels, cakes and kaiserschmarnn.

Verdant valleys cupping glacial blue lakes and edged in moss covered forest.

Peacocks on palace lawns.

Paintings of empresses, duchesses, and of Marie Antoinette.

Castle parapets.

Wild strawberries growing by the wayside.

Chocolates galore - some wrapped in a foil printed with Mozart's likeness.

Delicately painted decorative eggs. Also, delicately painted boiled eggs for breakfast.

A wealth of history! 

WATERFALL IN A MOUNTAIN

 

TRÜMMELBACH | THUNDER STREAM

Inside the dark heart of the mountain, cold and old and gleaming and indifferent to all outside moments, is a waterfall. 

The stones have known that noise, unrelenting, for millennia. Carving the noise into their being; if they spoke, it would be of thunder. Each drop of water is a millisecond, is a grain of sand on the beach, is a star in the sky. The passing water beholds me, and I am almost immortal. But to the stones, I am a slight flutter in the breeze, and no more.

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LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI

by Percy Bysshe Shelley c. 1816

“The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark - now glittering - now reflecting gloom -
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters - with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river,
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning through the tempest; - thou dost lie,
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever came.

A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame,
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion.

Upon that mountain; none beholds them there

The secret Strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind’s imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?
”

SWISS SNOW IN THE SUMMER

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SHENANIGANS

1. secret maneuvering

2. high-spirited activity

derivation : Irish expression sionnachuighim - "I play the fox"

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It was the middle of June, and the Summer blizzard came upon us quite unexpectedly. It seems to be the way of nature, to whip up one's plans with the wind, scattering them to the four corners, and then to reveal upon the weary traveler many unlooked for experiences of great beauty. 

And so it was that day - we had intended to hike the flowered mountains under an endless blue sky, but our reality became so much more than that: a limb-numbing cold, and swirls of snowflakes creating a hide-and-seek game with the landscape. One moment of visibility unveils a waterfall, rampaging through rocks and pine trees, another moment hides the scene behind a grey mist that falls into oblivion below. It instilled a kind of laughable joy in me, to see the spring flowers dusted with snow, and to think that we were so lucky as to see this anomalous weather.

---

SYMBOLISM | SNOW IN SUMMER

Snow and frost will bring an end to plant life, but from the white ashes of winter, a new world is born, and thus snow can be seen as a purification - a cleaning out of the old year and ushering in the new. Spring snow, too, represents that new life, and new beginnings. But snow in summer is something else. It is a mischief of the skies, an unexpected moment. Each flake meeting the green land in a blessing from above.

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And then, entering the path ahead of us, was a fox. She seemed unperturbed by our closeness. So agile and ethereal - like a wisp of a dream, I watched her till she disappeared into the white veil of the weather. Had I not taken a picture, I might have believed the whole thing to be a hallucination, brought on by the rising cold in my uncovered legs and arms. 

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SYMBOLISM | THE FOX

The fox has always been a symbol of mystery - of the wilderness untamed. Of hidden things and subtlety, and the ability to hide oneself. Of feminine energies, and the wisdom of one's own counsel.

Certain groups of Native American warriors would wear a fox skin, the head of the fox covering their own, so as to imbibe the wisdom of the animal in all its secrecy and cunning. Druids of the north would name their elders 'Son of the Fox', also pointing to the animal's mystical wisdom.

Bringers of change, the fox is a shapeshifter and has long been aligned with the energies of the earth - of constant change. When the spring snow was melting, people would watch the fox to see whether it would walk on the melting ice. If so, the ice was safe to cross. 

Thus, the fox may be seen as a guide, a teacher, a way-finder, and a messenger between ourselves and the wild world.

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In ancient Sumerian mythology, the fox was a messenger of the goddess Ninhursag, she who dwelt in the mountains. Ninhursag, the mother goddess, who asked Enki to create the waters of the world, and from those waters, gave birth to all plant life in the form of the goddess Ninsar, who walked in the Middle World and gave life to all of it. 

It was the fox who, upon hearing of Enki's illness - which he brought upon himself through greed and consumption and ill use of the earth's plant life, it was that fox who resolved to find Ninhursag and to ask her to heal the sick god, and to heal the earth.

Looking back, I now feel so blessed that this fox wished to reveal herself to me in the mountains of Switzerland.