"In Praise of Limestone"

2008 Mammoth Caves, Ky.

I found this quote while looking around for karst inspiration. In his article in the Geographical Bulletin, Michael F. Goodchild, PhD in karst geomorphology, McMaster University, quotes poet W.H.Auden: "if there is one landscape that we ... are constantly homesick for, this is chiefly because it dissolves in water." This curious statement will strike a chord instantly with those among us who love a cave (for claustrophobic me, the larger the better.) 

Its reference is to the karst limestone landscape which underlies much of the world, and yields its wonders due to water's action on rock. To create awe-inspiring sculpture, to carve whole worlds below the surface, or to dissolve completely - the magic of karst limestone. It's outside of the scope of my enthusiam to explain karst topology adequately, but here's a workmanlike description thanks to Wikipedia (yes, I donate.)

Here is Auden's poem. I love the lines "a secret system of caves and conduits...springs (t)hat spurt our of everywhere with a chuckle..." That expresses what we felt as we waiting for our tour, in the woods above the river that burbled innocently past.

The cave system was discovered in 1818 by cave lamplighter Luka Cec, who ventured further than the grand cave which his team were preparing (with lighting) for a visit of the Austrian Emperor Franz I. The comment attributed to him: "Here is a new world, here is paradise" pretty much sums it up.

A significant karst landscape stretches from northeastern Italy along the shore of the eastern Adriatic to Kosovo. Part of this region invites the world underground at the magnificent Postonja Caves nature preserve in northern Slovenuia,  

And now we come  to the point of all this rambling. Just recently I was there. The Lubljana Caves are very popular, and brilliantly managed. On a busy May Day Sunday, we were shuttled into and out of the depths by a little yellow train, and led by a guide along the perfectly smooth pathways through the indescribable wonders of the caves. 

As we moved steadily along, it was dificult to stop and fully take in the scene before us. We were in semi-darkness as well, as lighting focussed on specific monumental features. 

This, to explain my less than compelling photos, which obviously don't do the place full justice.

My own area of Ontario features a miniature version, Hell Holes, near Napanee. Sadly, the area closed in 2020 and I haven't heard it has, or will, reopen.   

We discovered that it was aptly named when my mosquito-phobic man and I visited ages ago. We entered the cave paths, joining clouds of mosquitoes that eventually saw Den running pell-mell out of the area, leaving me alone with the bugs who loved me less, and the little rock formations. 

Another, more salubrious journey to the centre of the earth came in Kentucky some years ago, as we returned from a vintage racing event at Barber Motorsports Park near Birmingham - the historic Mammoth Caves, the longest in the world. This video looks like the tour we took that day.

Here are some other cave wonders of the world, in Mexico, China and Ukraine.

 The ground under our feet is not as solid as we tend to believe. 

As our tour manager Michael said "the earth is beautiful, inside and out."

You Can't Take the Girl off the Farm

 There's an old expression: "You can take the boy off the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy."  Clearly, this applies to girls as well. When my brother and I get together, we inevitably end up sharing memories of growing up on our family farm. For our father's generation, farm life meant hard work and early responsibilities. For us, farm life meant freedom.

On my recent trip, I had a secret laugh on several occasions, in Slovenia and again in Italy, as outside my bus window, my window on the world, local farmers continued to do what they had always done. And I suspect I was the only interested observer.

 On the neat productive valley farms of Slovenia, remarkable after the hard-scrabble interior regions of Croatia that we had just crossed, I watched farmers cutting hay crops, an early harvest according to the calendar at home.

But most intriguing for me was the Veneto countryside around Jesolo, the resort area where we stayed outside of Venice. This land is flat and low-lying, alluvial plain bordering the Adriatic to the south. I was enthralled by the absolute flatness of the land and intrigued by the many canals and ditches crossing it and the abandoned rural villas from earlier times.

This morning I found this somewhat technical paper, of interest to no-one but me, I would suggest. But it answered all my questions

Our guide Vanya explained some of the region's history. The Piave and Assonto rivers flow into the Adriatic in the area. During WWI, Ernest Hemingway served with the Red Cross in the Veneto region, and was badly wounded on the Piave River. The experience found its way into his novel A Farewell to Arms. 

I've just learned about 'the Hemingway Route,' an eleven km. circular itinerary that traces places devastated by the war in that area. Here's a booking link if this interests you.

Fish Face

 On our way to Mostar, our bus turned off the main highway and parked at the entrance to a narrow road at the base of a stunning cliff face. This stop was all about lunch, but the attractions of the little creekside spot were compelling. A more picturesque lunch spot could not have been imagined. We walked along a  lane lined with tempting vendors, phone-capturing appealing waterside structures in a rich green landscape. We crossed a bridge to a waterside restaurant, grateful for the awnings over our outdoor lunch spot, as rain was threatening. Above it all, almost too much to take in, the beautiful solid rock cliff face, an intriguing white building at its foot.

I don't recall anyone mentioning the place, but a bit of detective work here at home has added to my delight at my memories. This place was Blagaj, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The white building is Blagaj Tekije, a Dervish monastery, built around 1520. Its architecture combines Ottoman and Mediterranean styles. It's considered a national monument. At the foot of the rock face is the source of the Buna river. 

 

The restaurant is called Restauran Vrelo. Here's their website if you would like to make a reservation. It also contains a few photos that describe the place better than mine do.

On the way along the river toward the restaurant, I wondered at the water feature below. When the plates were served, it became clear. They were trout ponds, and these perfectly seasoned little fellows were the result. Unaccustomed as I am to taking photos of my food, I didn't capture their sweet little faces. But I surely did enjoy the rest of them, along with traditional potatoes and kale.

We ate very well on this trip. I am grateful to the 15 to 18K steps we did each way, or I would have had to go jeans shopping on my return!

Last Tango in Venice

 In 1995, my dear one and I visited Venice for the first time. In person. In my imagination I had been wandering the calle, dreaming along the canals, and gazing dumb-struck at the architecture since my first encounter with them in art history classes a lifetime ago. I returned in 2023 with a congenial group, several of whom have become friends and travelling companions.

1995

On our 1995 trip, Den and I travelled by train from Padua, and took a vaporetto along the Grand Canal, every step a research project, to St. Mark's Square  - an introduction I shall never forget. 

In 2023 our tour group travelled by boat from the end of the road to enter the lagoon. Last week our Venice day began with a boat trip from Punta Sabbioni, a 45 minute water voyage offering yet another approach to the unforgettable skyline of this city.

Last week's visit was my first visit in sunshine - the sparkle on the water will stay with me forever. For this is my last visit. As fellow traveller Amar said, the world is large and the list is long. 

The one item on my to-do list for this visit was to find a square that meant a great deal to me; a place Den and I found refuge from the crowds on that long-ago day visit -  Campo Bragora. The Church of San Giovanni in Bragora with its late-Gothic facade crowns a small square with several trees, an ancient well and a few welcoming benches. This the church where Antonio Vivaldi was baptised in 1678.

So, with that one plan, to find my way to that memory spot during the 'free time' later,  I settled in to enjoy our guided walking tour. 

Our lovely guide turned immediately right down a calle off the Riva Degli Schiavone and almost immediately we entered a square -  Campo Bragora. 

An emotional moment I hid by skipping about taking photos. Somehow I don't think things like this are accidental. Hi buddy.

I have a lot of stories to share from this most recent trip. This one is likely to be my favourite.

Oh to be in England....

 At a Westben choral concert recently a friend and I were reduced to soggy tears when Aemilia Moser and Dante Santone performed the sweet love song We'll Gather Lilacs in the Spring, written in the 1940s by Ivor Novello. It's a  sentimental WWII song; lovers, the fellow off to war, sing of their hopes and dreams of a peaceful 'after' with its gentle pleasures. Love, loss and longing. 

"We'll gather lilacs in the spring again/And walk together down a shady lane/Until our hearts have learned to sing again/When you come home once more."

Recently The Gentle Author, a daily staple on my morning reading list, visited the bluebells in Bow Cemetery. So I am being given a nudge to think about English bluebells. 

There's something about spring bloom - that longed-for loveliness, joy at the renewal of colour and beauty at the end of dark dormant winter. But it's a fleeting joy. Spring blossoms are delicate; their season is short. As with our glorious autumn foliage which blazes for such a short time, fresh spring flowering evokes for me a wistfulness and a kind of sadness.

I believe English bluebells also bloom in Ontario, but the spring beauties that stop my homie's heart are trout lilies, violets, jack in the pulpit and trilliums, the blooms that adults pointed out to me as a child who loved flowers. I remember having the mysterious jack revealed to me for the first time, on an Arbor Day school outing with Miss Eaton, a whole lifetime ago. From that day also, I carry with me the lifetime prohibition against picking a trillium. 

For me, bluebells will always evoke happy times, delighted springtime discoveries along delightful English pathways with dear ones who are no longer among us.

Love, loss and longing.

Grant us Peace

From the first time I - we, when I was a 'we' girl - entered the cloisters of medieval Lincoln Cathedral in my Denis' home town, I was smitten.  After the transcendant space of the church we entered this place of ancient silence. Early English Gothic. I suspect I am not alone in this feeling. Just this afternoon I FB posted a couple of photos of the cloisters at the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, and was surprised at the response.

Definitions for a cloister are somewhat prosaic. Britannica, for example offers this: "a quadrilateral enclosure surrounded by covered walkways, and usually attached to a monastic or cathedral church..."  "A covered walkway with a colonnade on one side." "A covered walk, open gallery, or open arcade running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth" (new word.) 

Those of us who have experienced a cloister can do better.

Perhaps a cloister is not about what we can see, but what we feel. Peace in sacred nature. I'm just going to post and enjoy a few of these spaces now. And see if I can figure it out. And in doing so, and revisiting these tranquil spaces, to find tranquility in our turbulent time.

This lovely space is at the Byzantine church of Sant'Appolinaire in Classe, Ravenna. For years I had longed to see that city's miraculous Byzantine  mosaics, and in 2023 I did. 

Then a bit of cloister to rest the eyes, cleanse the palate as it were, from such rich fare.

Florence's San Lorenzo, parish church of the Medici family,  provides a welcome refuge from the insanely busy streets within its late 15th century cloister, Chiostro dei Canonici, the Cloister of the Canons. No-one should let Brunelleschi's unfinished facade deter further exploration, because within the huge complex is an exquisite Renaissance church, the  Mannerist Laurentian Library with Michelangelo's dynamic staircase and the wonders of the Old Sacristy and the Medici Chapels. One day, when I'm up to it, I'll post about my visit. 

But back to the cloister. Truly, a visitor to San Lorenzo needs to repair to this green space occasionally to calm the senses, still the heart. And settle the mind, which is invited to time travel the long history. San Lorenzo is the oldest church in Florence, consecrated in 393 and rebuilt by Brunelleschi in 1419. The rough facade was to be completed by Michelangelo, sheathed in white marble, but funding failed. This is not uncommon. Santa Croce's marble facade was completed in the 1860s, the well-known marble front of the Duomo in 1887 (what did we know?) 

A place of sanctuary and stillness, meditation and contemplation, gentle perambulation. A pause for breath in a busy city and a busy world.

Even this image has a way of calming my coffee and news nerves.

To conclude, I will settle into my favourite cloisters, those of Santa Croce, an immensely important 'state church', resting place of the famous and wealthy, who commissioned astonishing chapels. Those layers of history and devotion create a sumptuous and important interior (which I fully absorbed thanks to an enthralling audio tour). But exhausting, right?

Spent lovely lonely time at the Renaissance gem, the Pazzi Chapel. Its simplicity and order creates awe and stillness simultanously. I still can't believe I was there, had longed for that moment forever. 

 But still, nature needed.

 Cloister drill. 

There's some good history here, which I will leave for you because I, for once, am without words.

They're fixing a hole where the rain gets in

I was fully prepared to be awestruck by the Pantheon in Rome. The forest of giant columns under the portico sets the stage. The immense bronze doors build excitement. But, oh! To step through the entrance and look up, look way up. 

That immense dome is still the world's largest unsupported concrete dome. Roman engineering stories are fascinating; there are loads to choose from out there. This is good - a nod to Vitruvius. If you'd like to watch, here are a couple of art historians trying to outdo each other with their erudition and enthusiam here and here on SmartHistory. 

At the top of this immense coffered structure, the oculus, that nearly 9 metre (almost 30 feet!) hole in the roof, open to the heavens. Which begs the question - doesn't the rain come in?

There are some great Roman myths out there, perpetuated by those great story-tellers, the tourist guides. One of the tales states that it does not rain inside the Pantheon (despite that oculus).

It's told that in the early days of Christian celebrations in the Pantheon, the hundreds of candles and the warmth of breath and bodies contributed to an effect called 'the chimney effect'. That stream of hot air rising upward, meeting with the rain, "suppressed the perception of rain coming in." Here's the story on this site.

I am mad for marble mosaic floors. Much of my time in sacred spaces this trip has been spent looking down. The amazing variety in the natural stone, the skill and design artistry of the masons - and we just walk around looking up. Next to the floors in the Pantheon the Baroque altars and Renaissance tombs are mere schotskes (imho.) 

Truth is, when it rains heavily in Rome, it rains in the Pantheon too. The Roman builders, practical always, addressed the issue in two ways.

The astonishingly beautiful (and original!) marble mosaic floors are subtly slanted, providing for drainage via clever holes in the marble designs. I wonder if you can see them in these photos: they are tiny and tear-shaped.

A Footnote, or Why I'll Never Rely on AI

I was curious to know if there was any info on the number of degrees of the gradiant built into the marble floor. Appears no. I did a quick Google search for sources, and of course AI had its hand up first, and offered this, which I must make a point of seeing on my next visit to Rome:

:This slope is not a pronounced gradient, but rather a subtle inclination designed to guide water towards the open oculus at the dome's apex.