Edward Flaherty's Blog: flahertylandscape, page 37

Lenihan, Stories, Landscape

Can you feel this? Give it ten minutes.

About people who have lived their lives in a living landscape…and seen…and heard…those things that most of us don’t want to hear or talk about.

Tell me if it is not so?

Eddie Lenihan

And what about your garden, your neighborhood, your nearby landscapes?

Nature

…plants, animals, humans…

…shelter…and all are in the landscape.

First Snow–not quite

It’s that time of year for snow–mid-November, northern hemisphere, in highlands ski country, though the weather is not quite ready to play.

…but we can fix that…fire up the snow machines!

Autumn Mysteries Revealed…

…in the mountains…in one hour.

Autumn leaves are like forty years of a happy marriage.

The future is always unseen, uncertain, filled with anxiety.

Died and gone to heaven–all is clear.

These images revealed themselves over 15 minutes during an 800 meter climb on a cogwheel train in the Bernese Oberland Swiss Alps.

Mountains, civilized? Ha!

Mountains, civilized? Ha!
Not these behemoths!

Since written history and before, the Bernese Oberlands have frightened and inspired humans, including Goethe, Byron, Hesse, Mann, Strauss, Schiller, Mendelssohn, Doyle, Haller, Hodler, Savrasov, Koenig, Bierstadt, Wolf, Fearnley…the list goes on and on…and thousands of others who have followed their footsteps.

It is that human consensus which has inspired local people, evolving from agricultural dependency into the modern world, to build technically complex, electrically powered, narrow gauge cogwheel trains up the Bernese Oberlands mountain slopes to what is known today in the Swiss Alps as the Top of Europe.

So, now, humans climb these incredibly steep slopes, sitting on padded seats, with central heating, enjoying visual delights through floor to ceiling polarized glass windows–civilized access to the not nearly civilized mountains.

Access–maybe just a tiny bit civilized.

 

Hydrate or Die

In the Empty Quarter…do I need to be told? Hydrate or die?

Landscape design, construction and maintenance under the sun on the world’s largest continuous sand desert–the Empty Quarter–the Rub al Khali. Is it like…just another day at the office?

Just be glad to be here…

I’ve been writing a landscape story titled, The 23 Club. Above, I have summarized it in a five minute clip.

In this story an American expatriate landscape architect confronts the strange multi-cultural realities of Arabian Peninsula work. Those social peculiarities layer with the powerful presence of the Empty Quarter landscape…the Empty Quarter, an enigmatic sand desert which, alone by its very presence, negates life.

The multi-media clip opens a window on the physical geography and cultural issues that swirl about the story–the construction of an iconic five star destination resort in that oil-rich, sand desert which, until recently, had been populated only by the transient Bedu.

If you are attracted to ethnobotany or plants, gardens and landscapes and have the wonder; but you do not have the time or money to travel to the Arabian Peninsula for these, then, just be glad to be here.

Egypt: Eid al-Adha in Abbassia

flahertylandscape:

Multi-culturalism: not a mental exercise. The real landscape.

Originally posted on markisapayne: my saudi arabian blog:

Warning to vegetarians: Explicit content and descriptions of violence.

You’ve hopefully noticed I’m not keen on the word tourist. I wouldn’t describe myself as a traveller either, as most of my time is spent getting up at 6am and going to work five days a week like most people. Holidaying expat might be more accurate, or migrant who visits nearby countries when he has time off. But when you have a fixed amount of time to explore a new place, especially one as famous and rich in culture and history as Egypt, it’s a little difficult to avoid seeing the Pyramids and Luxor. So I was more than ready to accept an invitation from my colleague to spend Eid with his family in the district of Abbassia in Cairo. Very much not on the tourist trail. It’s an old district, with old grand European-style houses mixed in with…

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Pop-Up City Centers

…Pop-Up City Center…

I slept well. I dreamt deep.

When I opened my eyes…it was hard to focus…near and far…both fuzzy. Then the foreground cleared and I could see in the distance…across the broad green pastures…I saw the city center.

It had developed over time, drawing resources and energy from the sun, the earth and water–all the while transforming those flows into new forms, new shelters.

The shelters were populated by all diversities of living entities with energy flows, day after day, night after night, until…until…like a Roman settlement in North Africa, they just no longer could sustain neither the energy flows, nor the diversities of living entities.

And the next day, the sun rose; and I was home before the sun set.

Irish Roots

…Irish roots work magic in the forest…

I walked through the forest. Neither the date, nor the day mattered. It was in the north. It was in the mountains. Spruce forest. Densely packed, tall trees, more than 100 feet each.

I walked a ridge in that forest. The canopy sheltered. I wasn’t cold. Somewhere, way up there, was sun. Thin, narrow, fractured beams twinkled and sparkled near my feet.

Delicate cloud edges whisped. They came close…on the edges of forming or dissipating or both…here and there…from time to time.

I was tired from walking and climbing. I looked for a place to sit. My Irish roots have always worked magic for me in forests. So it was today when I was invited to sit down and take the shelter of a mushroom.

The ground was soft and the mushroom stem gently molded itself to my spine and rib cage. I was comfortable. My breathing became easy. It slowed. The rhythm eased my eyelids shut.