This time I’ve decided to divert from my usual sewing/knitting related reports and to share something else. I have to throw in a disclaimer immediately: I am by no means a landscape photographer, and don’t even own a camera (of my dreams) more complicated than point and shoot one. But I tried to do my best.
Last week we went for a short vacation in the Austrian Alps. Life is a paradox: I am afraid of heights, an ancient fear that seems to gain strength with (I shudder as I write this) with age. The thing is, I can’t bear looking into what to me, personally, looks like an abyss. It can be even a flight of stairs. Imagine me climbing a small hill-sized mountain! But the view. Breathtaking. I love mountains, despite my ridiculous fear. They make me immensely philosophical – majestic, beautiful, covered with trees or just bare, sharp, wearing their permanent snowcaps. They make me feel how small we are, after all. We will be gone, but the mountains will stand, guarding. Somehow they give a feeling of safety, too (well, ok, from the sole).
Once we climbed as far up as 2200 meters (about 7000 feet), and, honestly, some parts were done on all fours by me, so terrified I was to stand upright on the narrow path. But when I was finally UP THERE, I was stunned. Landscape already more scarce, only short flowers and grass, wind howling in my ears. And I thought: astronauts say they feel God when they are in open space. For me it was enough to climb a small mountain.
Do you see what I mean?
But my favourite was a small lake, lying like a gem, almost turquoise. One day it was full of cow bells clinging. Pastoral. It was a moment out of time – it could be today, it could one hundred years ago.
Talk about photographers’s luck: a couple of day later we came back to exactly same place, but it was abandoned. Just a serene water mirror. With a lovely place to stand, watch and contemplate your nothingness:
