tycho magnetic anomaly

The recent buzz about the discovery of a mysterious yet most likely of mundane origins of a metal monolith in the desert of Utah that channels in a sense the cinematic titan of 2001 made me think about this smaller though also puzzling concrete post I encountered during a walk in the woods last week. 

It’s in a clearing where some trees were recently felled for lumber. Though just off a logging trail, there’s nothing else nearby and no other signs of construction. The blue bit embedded seems to be the pontil marked base of a cobalt glass bottle. I wonder what it could be for or why it was placed there—I’ll have to keep an eye on this one. 

 

i’ll take the high road and you’ll take the low road

Though never looking forward to my long workweek commute—which is less frequent in these times and am able to telework (oder Home Office) most days one big consolation is a stretch of road I take over the mountains from outside of Bischofsheim to Fladungen along state road 2288, the Hochrhönstraße, crossing the highlands and connecting two regions as well as a conduit to manage traffic through the UNESCO-recognised nature reserve. Opened to vehicular traffic with fanfare on this day in 1958—construction began in the early 1930s but delayed during the war and only much later was the gravel path asphalted, this twenty-five kilometre scenic route could well be the highlight of any journey but it is especially nice to see just before coming home.

pilzfund

H and I wandered a bit in the woods foraging for mushrooms, and while we didn’t really encounter anything that we were reasonably certain was edible and warranted collecting and later research, we found that the forest was ripening with all sorts of fungi, including Wood’s Ear (Auricularia auricula-judae—see previously and which we forgot again was safe for consumption and is widely used in China—I just don’t know about the texture and the prospect of picking one up) that was pretty widespread along the path and some more nice examples of fly agaric (Amanita muscaria, Fliegenpilz, see above). 

A new variety that we had not encountered beforehand, however, were these colourful ones in the same family—sometimes referred to “verdigris agaric” called blue roundhead (Stropharia caerulea, der Grünblaue Träuschling)—the specific epithet caerulea being Latin for blue while for contemporary speakers it generally indicates a shade between azure and teal. Host trees are usually beeches (Buchen) and thrive in alkaline soils.

ibīdem

From the same source as our previous post, we are really enjoying exploring this extensive, exhaustive collection of historic maps and surveys and finding our little pocket of the world through the ages. Easy and intuitive, see if you can find yourself in this cartographic collection and how much things have changed and/or remained the same. Here we are annotated on two different catalogues of the Henneberger holdings in the seventeenth century.

 

to live alone in the bee-loud glade

Via Kottke, these superlative entries in the macro category for International Garden Photographer of the Year commended us to one recent snapshot that brought to mind William Butler Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Innisfree. What pictures from your garden are you keen to share? Explore an expansive gallery of many more superb and patient, intimate snapshots at the links up top. 

lilium martagon

Our thanks to friend of the blog Nag on the Lake for helping to identify a flower that I’ve encountered quite often in mid-June over a window of a few weeks during my walks in the woods. I had tried to research and learn what they were but having heard of an elusive and exotic local variety of orchid, I had pursued the wrong line of investigation.
The martagon lily (Türkenbund-Lilie, the epithet referring to the characteristic reflexed petals also derives from the word for a type of turban) has a range across Eurasia and is popular as a garden plant as well due to its long life span of fifty years and more. It was believed to have curative properties by practitioners of traditional medicine but is highly toxic to cats.

sunday drive: grabfeld

The fertile region in the southern expanse of the Rhön mountains, referred to eponymously as dig- or ditch-field is so named according to local lore that a queen once lost a beloved ring here and ordered the entire land dug up (tilled) until it was found.
In gratitude for its recovery, she founded an estate that would eventually become Königshofen, one of the major market towns dating back to the eighth century.
We took a little tour of the neighbouring counties and first made our way to Bibra, a small settlement focused and informed by the dynasty of imperial knights that governed the duchy since the tenth century and constructed this castle at the town’s centre.
Retaining its original style as a Franconian royal court, Burg Bibra was destroyed during the Peasants’ Revolt and rebuild in the seventeen century true to form—its most recent faithful refurbishment earning a prize in 2002 amongst castle conservators and is presently used as a seminar centre with accommodations for guests.
The patronage of three important prince-electors in the family brought Bibra the church of Saint Leo (dedicated to the early pontiff, Leo the Great), decorated with the altar and sculpture from the school of Tilman Riemenschneider (previously) and is one of the finest examples of late Gothic architecture.

On the way to our next destination, we came across an open-air museum preserved in the former expansive border-zone, demilitarised for decades but with displays of the layers of fortifications and the intervening mine field to imagine.
As with the rest of this strip of terra nullis, it is now a nature preserve and a paradisiacal place for butterflies.

A few detours brought us to the community of Sulzdorf an der Lederhecke to see the gigantic Baroque palace Sternberg, the ancestral seat of a branch of the line of our old friends Count Poppo and the Hennebergs.
We marvelled at it from a distance and it was when we got a little closer, navigating the village directly behind the huge structure that we realised that we had in fact visited once before in May of 2012, noting the calendric symmetry of this construction finalised in 1669 with its four onion-domed turrets representing the seasons, twelve hearths standing for the months of the year, an astonishing and exact fifty-two doors for every week and three hundred sixty-five windows.  I wonder what the story behind that decorating statement was?
The palace is privately owned still and bears some resemblance to the palace of Aschaffenburg, Schloss Johannisburg—the residence of the archbishop of Mainz.
There were koi in the fountain and the watering trough and the Marian figure of one of the rows of homes that were at the rear of the castle was particularly striking for her iconic halo of stars.
Our final stop was a bit more secluded, though in the same community, Sulzdorf an der Lederhecke, as the last and also in private hands and occupied though by descendants of the former von Bibras. This well preserved palace on the water—Wasserschloss—is called Burg Brennhausen and guards the frontier between Grabfeld and the Haßbergen. The current baron is, according to the information board, a petroleum tycoon with a business in the US and divides his time between the palace and a home in Pasadena.

schmetterlinge

Coincidentally thanks to a post from a fellow blogger, I was able to indirectly identify the butterflies that I encountered in the meadow yesterday gathered around a thistle bloom through his meeting of a Tawny Emperor. These are their European cousins called Apatura metis—that is Freyer’s Purple Emperor (Donau-Schillerfalter), taxonomically classified by entomologist Christian Friedrich Freyer of Ansbach in 1829, and so called as the open wings of the males display blue and purple, if viewed from the right angle but normally appear to have more subdued harvest colours.

wüstung schmerbach

Owing to the proximity of the former inner-German border, we knew that there were some depopulated places in the region as well as losses due to geopolitical forces and factors spanning from 1945 to 1990, but had not realised before how assiduously these abandoned settlements (Wüstungen)—often removed without a trace, have been documented and studied nor how recently removal and demolition was carried out.
One such place was the valley village not far from Helmershausen, first accounted for in 1562 as holding of the Henneburg cadet line, Schmerbach was destroyed during the Thirty Years War but re-established in the mid-1600s.
In the late nineteenth century, an industrialist from South Hampton founded a brick factory there and in Weimarschmieden, a village not far away on the Bavarian side of the border. When Soviet forces occupied the area in July 1945, employees of the brickworks were given parcels of land as part of reform efforts by the state, but because the frontier was only a few hundred metres distant and expensive to patrol, authorities decided in 1973 to raze the factory, stables, farmstead and eight homes and resettle the residents. A memorial stone commemorates the destruction and removal.
The surrounding area is all farmland and the only remnant of the village are the electricity transformer tower and a small cemetery in the middle of a field, marked by a grove of trees, the last burial having taken place in August 1948. There are other spots like this and we plan to explore and learn more.

steinwand

Recently, H and I took a hike around a rock face (Felswand) at the foothills and steepening calved cliffs of the Maulkuppe, near the Milseburg.
A few climbers were out scaling the rocks—which are volcanic phonolite (Phonolith—sounding stone, named after the characteristic clink that this uncommon mineral makes when struck—we’ll have to be more attentive and listen next time) and not the more common basalt formations (see here, here and here) as we’d originally thought made up the mountain side. There are some one hundred climbing paths (Kletterrouten) on the Steinwand—which while it is on private property, is freely accessible for all.

stockheimer warte

While researching something else, I chanced upon the identity of the now familiar landmark of my daily excursions (see previously), once part of a network of watch and signal towers though this one has since been obscured by the treeline that allowed authorities and magistrates to communicate with great alacrity even the late Middle Ages, atop a peak with its next link in the transmission line-of-sight being the Lichtenburg (see also). Inaccessible and well-preserved, I half suspected the fifteenth century, five-metre high watchtower to be some sort of folly or artificial ruin meant to lend atmosphere, with only the romantic suggestion of a staircase and like some place for a kept-maiden, but learned it not only was pressed into service but also has some local lore associated with it.
Once upon a time, a woman from the village went up to the summit to gather some blueberries and left her child to nap nearby on the moss-covered flagstones of the tower while she worked. The woman heard a shriek and ran to the base of the tower only to find her precious baby replaced by a monstrous imposter (eine Balg, a changeling). Seeing no choice but to carry on as if it were her own offspring, the woman took it back to the village, where despite wanting for nothing, it grew up (as she feared) crooked and simple but an otherwise upstanding citizen. A second tale relates that of a cobbler’s apprentice who fled his master distraught one evening and climbed into the tower, preferring exposure or starvation to the continued punishment and abuse by his master. The night grew darker and more foreboding, the wind picking up and the whole forest below seeming to surge around the tower, the sound of fleeing animals under the howl of the storm. There was a break in the wind and the tumult of noise was replaced by the raucous and lively sounds of a hunting party on horseback, the procession singing merrily songs of their adventures—which gave the boy comfort and resolve to enjoin society, even if it was a lowly shoemakers apprentice. As the hunting party receded and faded into the distance, the storm resumed, though less threatening than before and the boy drifted off to sleep. The next day, he was found by some lumberjacks who returned him to his workshop where he remained, becoming an expert cobbler himself.

sehenswürdigkeiten oder rhön around the world

Taking advantage of the bright weather but with an abundance of caution, H and I took a windshield tour meandering through a few nearby locations, first stopping in Helmershausen, a settlement filled with half-timbered (Fachwerk) buildings founded in the foothills of the Thüringen highlands by our old friend Count Poppo VI and endowed with a really out-of-proportion village church.
Completed with the Baroque stylings of the mid-eighteenth century as a showcase for the minor nobility of the area, its towering steeple and ornately decorated wood panels have earned the village church the sobriquet of “Dom der Rhön”—the cathedral of the region.
Next along the way we saw the Bernhäuser Kutte, a sinkhole and protected geotope, with a depth of up to fifty metres across a relatively small surface area unique for the state.
After a bit more of taking in the gorgeous green scenery at speed, we stopped to see the Kirchenberg—fortified church compound, Wehrkirche Santke Albanus, dedicated to the British protomartyr—of the town of Kaltensundheim (see above), an impressive Gothic structure in whose hall Caspar Bach, great cousin of the forefather of the musical family, Veit Bach, was married to Susanne Markert, the daughter of a prominent local tailor, and established the cadet branch of the family after they had immigrated from Hungary around 1520.

Too early?
We are very fortunate to live such a beautiful region and in proximity to such new sites and history to discover.  We want everyone to be safe and want to model the right behaviour, because we are all in this together and all of our actions count, no matter how seemingly inconsequential.   
We hope to take to heart and practise how that privilege is not to be flaunted but exercised only if and when it’s safe to do so. Cover your face, keep your distance and wash your hands and perhaps most importantly, know that these places and the whole wide world will wait for you and be yours to explore once this is over.

it happened on the way to baker street

Though he’s not quite yet there and it’s all I can do to not play the song back to him and encourage him in the right direction, our neighbour’s rooster wails throughout the day with a crow that close awfully close to the timeless opening saxophone riff from Gerry Rafferty’s 1977 recording which anyone in the horn section should cut their chops on. I’ll update you if his pitch and timing improve or at least manage to capture a recording of this very audible but demurring bird.

gangolf der heiliger

In honour of the Burgundian saint’s feast day, 11 May, whom has developed quite a local cult following, we’re sharing a few impressions of the nearby chapel of Gangulphus (Gangolf and Gangolfskapelle, see previously) on the foothills of the Rhön over looking the town of Fladugen.

First consecrated by the archbishop of Würzburg in 1496, razed during the Reformation and Peasants’ Revolt and rebuilt in 1597, the Gothic structure with semi-circular apse is decorated inside in Roccoco style and the grassy knoll rests a top an ornate and flowering Marian Grotto (Mariengrotto)—the shrine well-tended and filled with the objects of devotion, votives and prayers of pilgrims.

leucanthemum x superbum

We’re enjoying quite an early superbloom of daisies of the bigger variety, Ox-Eye or Marguerite, in the back garden. Previously they’ve bloomed a bit later in the year, confined to hilly back patches of the yard we’ve kept wild but now they’ve taken over and we’re content to mow a path around the deck and the back door and leave the rest to nature.

dorfgebiet

Exploring a newly discovered footpath (previously) that meandered along the periphery of the fields, I came across this beautiful though seemingly strikingly impossible to plan and envisage panoramic vista of our village. It’s not taken from an impossible angle but when a settlement has been allowed to grow slowly (or not) by dint of topology and location but rather it is quite rewarding and privileged to find such a vantage point.

daily constitutional

Even before availing myself to my midday walks through the woods where we live, it was a privilege to live in such proximity with Nature and wandered solitary for miles without encountering another soul, and now this peaceful, restorative ritual has really become an important one that’s never stinted or cut short as I’ve taken to exploring every fork in the path and have discovered quite a few hidden, anchoring landmarks in disused cabins, fishing holes and welcome vistas.

 Though still alone and hardly seeing another person out at any hour or no matter what the weather, in one direction, lies the gently logged but managed woodlands with extensive trails and opposite is our section of the European Green Belt, a nature reserve than spans the former Inner-German border and Iron Curtain with paths that follow old patrol routes.

The birdsong is exuberant and watching the trees awaken, day by day, has been a priceless and cherished thing to experience and am deeply grateful for these long, extended hikes and the chance for a change of pace to reconnect.