We were hiking in the Palatinate a few weeks ago. One one day, we came to the wooded top of a mountain. It had a somewhat otherworldly feeling to it. Everything was very dry (no rain in quite some time). The ground was densely covered with orange pine needles. A rather strong and constant wind was blowing the whole day, dominating the soundscape. There was a sense of emptiness. No sight or sound of any animals or other humans, just the wind blowing in the trees. It reminded me a bit of the old video game Myst, in case some people here know it.
And at the end of the path, as if to refute that loneliness but somehow even reinforcing it, a little trace of humanity, of German administration accuracy: A survey marker.
I tried convey my feeling of that place with a little photo series, I hope it is somewhat successful. It’s only photos, so you have to imagine the sound of the wind yourselves :).
With all the horrible events happening in the world today my first thought when I saw the survey marker was a landmine. I should stop looking at the news.
Some lovely twisted pines there. I especially like the swirlliness of the third one, it has great movement. You love to see what looks like old growth forest too. Nice job!
Pine trees span across most of Europe, actually. Pine forests are some of my favorite to take a walk in I think – besides the trees themselves there’s very little going on, which feels interesting.
I think originally pines were not that wide spread here but have been planted a lot as fast growing wood supply. This is about to change now, as they don’t cope so well with climate change.
