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Mimpish Monday: The Jardin at Clear Lake
Aug. 1st, 2016 08:57 amFor today's Mimpish Monday, we find Reginald Farrer close to the end of his expedition to Kansu and Tibet in 1914-15.
THE RAINBOW BRIDGE
The Hastened End, pp. 274-276
Down the depths of the Dene we rode, and up the shingled miles of the confluent river, meeting, in the alder-coppice of the boulder-bed, with the abandoned antlers of an elk, left there till its lucky murderer should have time to come and reclaim them. Then up the mountain-side we still rode, and up to the Ma-chang, and up and up and up into the Alp, and over its bays and folds, till we actually attained on horseback to the mountain of black blocks above the Clear Lake.
It is a curious place, so loose a compilation of somber vast rocks that the turf between is springy with unfilled holes beneath, and there are deep caverns and hollows everywhere among the boulders, and water trickling and lurking, as if the whole hill were a sponge. As it indeed is, a slack-woven texture, full of pores and passages, lightly accumulated, and never settled down into solidity. Here we encamped; Bill in one tent, and I in another, and the staff in the big white one, lent us by the Viceroy of the Koko-Nor.
( read more )
[This is an occasional series of postings inspired by Abigail Rorer, Mimpish Squinnies: Reginald Farrer's Short Guide to Worthless Plants. Rorer's book includes prints of fourteen plants Farrer considered worthless-- an interesting hybrid of botanically accurate and...different. You can see her work, including all fourteen mimpish squinnies, here: http://www.theloneoakpress.com/prints/newer.html ]
THE RAINBOW BRIDGE
The Hastened End, pp. 274-276
Down the depths of the Dene we rode, and up the shingled miles of the confluent river, meeting, in the alder-coppice of the boulder-bed, with the abandoned antlers of an elk, left there till its lucky murderer should have time to come and reclaim them. Then up the mountain-side we still rode, and up to the Ma-chang, and up and up and up into the Alp, and over its bays and folds, till we actually attained on horseback to the mountain of black blocks above the Clear Lake.
It is a curious place, so loose a compilation of somber vast rocks that the turf between is springy with unfilled holes beneath, and there are deep caverns and hollows everywhere among the boulders, and water trickling and lurking, as if the whole hill were a sponge. As it indeed is, a slack-woven texture, full of pores and passages, lightly accumulated, and never settled down into solidity. Here we encamped; Bill in one tent, and I in another, and the staff in the big white one, lent us by the Viceroy of the Koko-Nor.
( read more )
[This is an occasional series of postings inspired by Abigail Rorer, Mimpish Squinnies: Reginald Farrer's Short Guide to Worthless Plants. Rorer's book includes prints of fourteen plants Farrer considered worthless-- an interesting hybrid of botanically accurate and...different. You can see her work, including all fourteen mimpish squinnies, here: http://www.theloneoakpress.com/prints/newer.html ]
