Sometimes, things just don’t fit together. The Bükk Mountain is in the first place a vast beech forest. Right in the middle, very close to the Istállós-kő, which with its 959 metre above M. portrays Hungary’s third-highest peak, I come across some peculiar clearings. The larger ones appear as if they were once the scene of a particularly aggressive form of agriculture. The smaller ones look like craters that have been pockmarked by bomb-shelling. But that begs the question: who throws bombs into a forest?
In one such clearing a rounded longish form springs out of one of its pock-marked holes. It reminds me of a halved pear with a slightly irregularly curved neck. Out of this rounded form grows – almost exclusively – a fine blade of grass that’s been bleached by the sun and dried out by the frost of the early winter nights. Nevertheless, wild flowers have managed to take root in the fold surrounding the little hill. Their frozen and dried-out stems surround the little hill like black thorns, making the hill look more rolling, gentler. In the weak autumn light that’s unable to lend things much plasticity, the vegetation appears to be like the softest of down. And, suddenly, I understand that the earth itself has constructed this curve because it wishes to be stroked and caressed at this very spot. I feel I’m qualified to, so I stretch out my hand – only to notice soon after that the conditions are not like that at all.
First Publication: 16-11-2013
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