The Tree Circle of Life is to be found at the top of the hill known as Himmelstraße in Vienna.
The German word Himmel can mean both sky and heaven. Let Himmelstraße be a road leading to Heaven then. Today it was a pure and heavenly place. And I had it all to myself.
There are 40 trees in the heavenly circle - 36 around the perimeter and 4 in the centre. The various trees represent the passing of time and the 4 seasons of the year. Today the scene was blanketed with snow and when I was there more snow was falling.
I laid a trail of running-shoe footprints around the circle of trees and paused by my own tree - a fir.
Two trees had recently been taken away for their own protection - the olive tree and the fig. These will reappear when the weather improves. And so, in reality, there were just 38 trees to visit in the Tree Circle of Life today.
I had never heard of this. It's wonderful, and I'll bet it was an enjoyable run.
ReplyDeletethe olive tree and the fig have run off together and are currently taking a Mediterranean cruise.
ReplyDeleteLovely idea but why is your particular tree the fir? Also like the idea of the fig and the olive eloping - hope they took some honey and plenty of money. Keep warm in this wintry weather.
ReplyDeleteSnow, in unexpected places.
ReplyDeleteI am in wonder of the tales from Europe. Calif has predictable snow.
so far.
AM - always great to run in the Vienna Woods - 5,000kms of trails on my doorstep! I'm on them nearly every day.
ReplyDeleteSparker - an Austrian winter is not for everybody!
Weaver - it's like a clock. There's a different tree every for every period of 10 days or so. What tree you have depends on your birth date. I share my tree with Elvis Presley!
Diane - we get lots of snow in Austria in winter. But even so in the Alps the glaciers are receeding. On the Italian border the body of 4,000 year old shepherd (they call him Ötzi or Oetzi) was exposed a few years ago. In Europe Austria is known as a country for ski-ing. In UK there's more snow than normal this year. And colder, too. The Eurostar trains (London-Paris-Brussels) keep breaking down.
I have come to you via Weaver'sblog. I found
ReplyDeleteasahi.com/english/
but would be grateful for the exact way to find the Haiku submission section, please.
Greetings from Swansea, hometown of Dylan Thomas!
Hello Coastcard and thanks for the bardic greetings!
ReplyDeleteYou go to the English page and in the margin on the right side about halfway down you click on Haiku weekly the link to (David McMurray's) haiku page and up it comes. It'll be the page from 1st Jan. You can read a few poems and get a an idea what they are after. There's an e-mail address for submissions: mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp
The best of them will eventually end up in New York Herald Tribune or some equivalent broadsheet paper in USA.
I have to dash now. Please get back if you have any probs. Good luck with guarding the Worm's Head. More power to your telescope.
All the best, Gwilym