Thursday, June 4, 2009

The Search for a Clearing

Holzwege, June 2009, JB

“Wood” is an old name for forest. In the wood are paths that mostly wind along until they end quite suddenly in an impenetrable thicket.
They are called “woodpaths.” [holzwege]
Each goes it peculiar way, but in the same forest. Often it seems as though one were identical to another. Yet it only seems so.
Woodcutters and foresters are familiar with these paths. They know what it means to be on a woodpath.

Martin Heidegger, Holzwege

5 comments:

bruno said...

sweating along a trail
Wishing the hut closer, my pack lighter

The hut be anticlimactic
One story
among other stories
dried sweat
of others

the trail will appeal again
where sweat has context
and I feel purposeful –

sweating along a trail
Wishing the hut closer, my pack lighter
...

Hi Jacky
that's Canterbury NZ though, not Black Forest.

cheers,Bruno.

jacky bowring said...

Indeed, this Hut too was not Heidegger's, nor the forest That Forest. The searching, the trail, though are one in the same, the paths which weave and confound, and the clearing always already imminent... ever closer ...
Thanks Bruno ...cheers, jacky

Roger said...

What interests me is that the photo looks identically baffling whichever way up you view it! ........
The end of some trails cannot be understood or borne merely with the sum of our experience - these kind demand of us more than we can summon up. Even seasoned Woodcutters fall prey to despair. At those times we need a kite to fly to show us which way is up! (any good photographs of kites?)

jacky bowring said...

Loss of datum is a problem indeed ... a kite in a forest perhaps. Or, if you are trapped in an avalanche, so I'm told, you have to dribble. Then you know which ways is down ...

Roger said...

Dribbling in an avalanche....... I know that feeling!!