Friday 26 January 2018

shinrin-yoku

We really appreciated this formal introduction to one of our favourite pasttimes from the New Yorker on the Japanese therapeutic practise of forest bathing (ๆฃฎๆž—ๆตด) and learning of all the collateral benefits through the soft-focus portfolio of Tokyo-based photographer Yoshinori Mizutani. Both scientists and physicians recognise its spectrum of benefits in curbing stress and anxiety and boosting overall well-being. Learn more about shinrin-yoku at the link above and get inspired to carve space out in your day to commune with the trees in your local greenspace.

Sunday 3 September 2017

daytrip: hochrhรถn

We had the chance to do a bit of local exploring near our home and we found the ruin (die Mauerschรคdel as it’s singularly known) of a fortified church built around the year 1000 and abandoned about three centuries later during the height of the plague (Pest) in the fields behind the village of Filke, the inter-German border separating Bavaria from East Germany once passing through the nave of the structure.
In the 1970s, the whole of the structure was ceded to Bavaria for security purposes. Though the outbreak of the plague is considered the likely culprit for its eventual abandonment, another anachronistic suggestion is that once bulwarks of the region, Filke and other surrounding settlements that essentially became ghost-towns before being eventually repopulated sacrificed themselves to the marauding tribes of the Huns, able to Christianise the scouting parties only to be later betrayed and massacred. A maiden in white is said to haunt the grounds, but that is a relatively recent embellishment.
Afterward, we took another detour to see some marshland in a nature reserve (the whole region is a nature reserve, really, but there are also specially designated areas that are protected from traffic and development) but the trails didn’t really get very near and the scrub separating it from the path was intimidating. H and I did however get the chance to explore the deep woodlands and encountered some deer that bounded past us before we could react.
More our pace, however, we found an assortment of mushrooms and toadstools that we resolved to learn about and come back to the clearing where they seemed to thrive.
The forest directly behind our house are baronial lands, still in the same family, and we wouldn’t want to be accused of poaching.

Thursday 11 May 2017

xylotheque

The intrepid explorers of Amusing Planet introduce us to a very special sort of “book” depository curated in locations across Europe and beyond that began with the advent of modern forestry in the eighteenth century.
Botanists began forming libraries whose stacks contained wooden books that were compartments that held the twigs, fruit, root and bark samples of different sorts of trees—ฮพฯฮปฮฟฮฝ being Greek for wood and ฮธฮฎฮบฮท a library. The word book in English itself is a cognate of the Germanic word for the beech tree, with early writing carved on blocks of wood. The pictured shelf is part of the Schildback Xylotheque located in the city of Kassel and there’s much more to be found at the link up top.

Tuesday 7 March 2017

june bride oder baumbastik

Amusing Planet has a nice profile and appreciation of the Bridegroom’s Oak (die Brรคutigamseiche) of the Dodauer Forest of Eutin—north of Lรผbeck, a tree with its own postal code (Postleitzahl) and recipient of human correspondence and secret-keeper.
While the tree’s origins might be conflated with myth and the message of missionaries, the tradition of letter-writing can be traced back to historical star-crossed lovers. A forester’s daughter and the son of a Leipziger chocolatier used the oak as a letter-drop cite for their liaisons—to their parents’ initial disapproval. Later the parents relented and the pair was wed under the trees boughs in June 1891. Their fame spread by word of mouth and people began writing to the tree in hopes of finding true love. Letters deposited in the tree’s trunk are open to public-inspection and several matches have been made over the years. The Bridegroom’s Oak was itself married to the Holy Ghost horse chestnut (die Himmelgeister Kastanie) in April of 2009—across Germany in the Ruhrgebiet near Dรผsseldorf. The two seem to be handling their long-distance relationship quite well.

Tuesday 7 February 2017

inholding

Satellite views of some rural areas of US northwest reveal forested lands that have distinctive chequerboard patterns—almost like the transparent colour tool in digital imagery, whose origins reach back to the mid nineteenth century when federal lands were parcelled to corporations and individuals in such an alternating fashion, beginning with railroad land grants along transportation corridors.
The public retained the spaces in between—these are square mile lots—as wooded refuges buffeted by grazing land managed by homesteaders, and hoped to benefit economically as improved infrastructure increased the value of federal holdings. The government planned to sell the remaining parcels at a profit but this real estate bubble failed to foment as most people motivated to resettle and go West weren’t people of means to begin with and could not afford plots adjacent to the railways and most went unsold or were given away wholesale.

Wednesday 17 August 2016

arboretum

Amusing Planet has a touching and gentle appreciation of Survivor Trees from all corners of the globe that bore witness all sort of human catastrophe and crime, but withstood the wreckage brought to its boughs and remained standing as a memorial. One of the more poignant profiles is that of the Miracle Pine that somehow made it through the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011 when everything else was washed away. This lone sentinel sadly too succumbed to the aftermath of the massive flood, poisoned slowly over the following months by salt water. An artificial tribute was put in its place and a high lookout tower surrounds it.