Masked Monday

Monday, November 9, 2009 is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

As life-changing that event has been for this country and for the world, as much as life for millions has changed in the two decades since the old order fell, 20 years is but an afternoon in Europe.

This year is the 2,000th anniversary of the Varus Battle – or the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest -  in which a band of Germanic warriors defeated three Roman legions in 9 AD at Kalkriese, in northwestern Germany near Osnabrück.

That long-forgotten battle also changed the direction of history.  It was a decisive clash which put an end to Roman expansion into Northern Europe.

Those three masks are reproductions of a magnificent Roman cavalry mask at the centre of a display of Roman artifacts unearthed at the battle site.

If you’re anywhere near Osnabrück, go to the museum site for a day and marvel.  It’s really worth it.  I’ve been back four times and find something new every time.

A furnace of hot yellow in the beech forest

Why is it that every autumn seems to be more brilliant than the last?  Or is the intensity I’m seeing in colours this year thanks to an effort to look at the world at a slower pace?

Taking off for a weekend just the two of us to a spot in the middle of a beech forest might have something to do with it.  We boarded an ICE train in Hamburg late Friday afternoon bound for a weekend in Kaiserslautern, arriving at our hotel close to midnight after a short taxi ride.  If the journey was merely a black tunnel slashed with fleeting smudges of white and grey as the train fled south through the German countryside, the sight which greeted us from our first-floor window the next morning made up for it:  A woman walking four draught horses across a field, their breath puffing in the morning mist, splashes of yellow in the wet grass.

Out the door and down a path after breakfast, within minutes we were surrounded in the intense yellow of the beech forest.

The forest near Kaiserslautern is part of the Naturpark Pfälzer Wald, and forms the largest area of continuous forest in Germany.  Though we were only minutes from the border of a small city and from the lookout tower could see a German Premier League and 2006 World Cup soccer stadium, we walked as if the still of the path had been reserved in advance for us alone.

Though every corner brought a new combination of colour as the beech gave way to larch, European and American oak and evergreen pine, what struck me the most was its clear floor and general uniformity.  On the west coast of Canada the underbrush is so thick you can’t see  to either side of the path, while in Eastern Canada the greens, yellows, browns and reds of the dying maple leaves turns the forest into a jumble of hue.  Here the forest floor is a flat carpet of brown beech leaves, the sky above yellow.

We had to go into the city only once, and were glad we did, because its surprisingly unattractive, charmless streets  made us want to return to the beauty of the forest that much sooner.   We’d never have gone to Kaiserlautern had we not been invited to a friend’s birthday party, and it’s lucky for us she chose to hold it at Bremerhof,  where we stayed.  I can’t stay right now whether we’ll go there next fall to enjoy the forest all over over again, but it would sure be worth it.

Back from British Columbia

But still heavily jet-lagged.   A couple of photos from my hometown are about all I can muster right now.

Now taking bets as to when this old shed finally gives in:

And one from around Kamloops, where my mother went to school during the war:

Boy hitting the bricks

Sometimes it’s only after you get home that you notice the shot.  Just setting up a long telephoto down some stairs, framing the photo when suddenly this kid pops into view.

Click.

I like how his clothes match the railing and the bricks, how he’s caught startled by something and whirling around, and how the lens seems to place him on an impossibly uphill slope.

Maybe it’s better in black and white?

I don’t know.  What do you think?