Tuesday 21 February 2012

Greener winter sport is not for softies

After a week of racing down the piste despite frostbite temperatures and skin-peeling gales, it was time for some greener winter sports.

Snow shoe walking is often described here as “sanft” which translates as soft or gentle. But though it is gentle on the environment, don’t get the idea that it is for softies.

Snow shoes no longer look like tennis rackets. An aluminium frame with harness for hiking or snowboard boot which is hinged so that the foot lifts from the heel as usual, they are equipped with fearsome teeth underneath to help grip the snow.


If you can walk, you can enjoy this winter sport. Just put one foot in front of the other as usual and the woods and the wilderness are waiting for you to come and explore.

Very often it is a monochrome world. After a big snow fall the forest tree trunks stand dark on one side, and contrasting white with snow on the other, their branches mirroring this black and white effect.

Walking through the woods, you don’t need much imagination to feel dwarfed by all around you, and even slightly tentative; do Hansel and Gretel come to mind?

What lies beneath the huge mounds of snow which loom on either side of your track, rounded and still? Ant heaps, small bushes and nascent trees. What made these tracks that cross the trail? Deer, chamois, hares, foxes and birds are all busy surviving these cold, snow rich months. Behind, you are leaving a trail the yeti would respect.

Walking with snow shoes can be strenuous at times when no one has gone before to make a trail. But it is rewarding and healthy, sucking down the cold fresh air. Down hill in powder, you can half slide, half glide with almost effortless grace.

Adventure awaits, you only need snow shoes, ski poles and a bit of imagination.

Friday 10 February 2012

After the big snow, the big freeze

After some weeks of steady snowfall, the past 10 days or so have seen little added to the mountains of white in the garden but temperatures have been down in the ice cellar. Only in the past day or so did they rise above minus 10C and then only to six below zero. Today it is once again below minus 10.

The effect on Embach appears to be exactly zero: people going about their daily lives as usual, schoolchildren waiting for the school bus in the early morning, parents driving to work, holidaymakers skiing, enjoying the cross-country circuit and joining ski classes. Life goes on uninterrupted, bordered by vertical walls of ice along the roads, and great piles of snow left by Pauli and his snow plough.
Nestling under thick white duvets

There are however minor irritations of such a cold snap: just the dressing and undressing each time we want to go outside as it takes time to put on boots and socks, hat, scarf, gloves, jumper and jacket. Then on coming in, the process goes into reverse with the added aggravation of steamed up spectacles. There is the frequent necessity for nose blowing, the contents of the compost bin, uncovered from under two metres of snow, are frozen, the car is a terrible mess and can’t be washed because the water would freeze (this could be seen as a benefit), the birds have already chomped their way through 40kg of sunflower seeds and so on.

But would we want it any other way? No, of course not! Winter is a magical time especially at these temperatures. The landscape twinkles in the sunlight, the air is crisp and the snow groans and crunches underfoot, the tracks in the garden reveal the myriad of night time visitors, the houses nestle under thick, fluffy white duvets and when it snows, tiny glistening crystals fall gently dusting the snow with a fresh powdery coat.

Embach is especially beautiful at this time – but then, I say that at every season.
The roads are bordered with walls of ice and snow

Thursday 2 February 2012

Bad hair day? Blame the Moon

A few days ago I had my hair cut. I was the only customer in the normally busy hairdresser’s and Evelyn said as she snipped away that January is normally a quiet month…”and then there is the moon calendar…but it’s too late for you now”.

The phases and positioning of the moon in conjunction with the star signs and the elements, as indicated on the Moon Calendar dictate which day is a good day for a hair cut and what is not. Hairdressers are busy or quiet according to this calendar.

There’s much more to it than just the hair. The moon calendar is used my many people here to choose appropriate days for many things from personal health and wellbeing, to farming and gardening, and on household activities and maintenance.

The principle is that, just as the moon creates the ocean tides, so it influences the rising sap in our plants and also the working of our bodies.

Every day on local radio, in newspapers and in a variety of calendars and diaries we are told that it is not a good day for, for example, removing warts, or drilling a well, that fattening foods work better on this day or that botox will last longer if applied today, that it is a good day for cleaning windows and for spreading manure on the garden.

Until I came to Austria I had never heard of the moon calendar and as a sophisticated former city dweller was pretty sceptical…in fact I thought it a bit of a joke like horoscopes. Before writing this I looked it up on Wikipedia – and even in that all-knowing corner of the internet, found no reference to the moon’s influence on haircuts or removing warts.

However, over the years I have come to greatly respect the farmers in Embach. They are all small family micro-businesses working on the steepest of hillsides often in harsh weather conditions. There is no room in their budgets for wastage and families with rakes and hand mowers help each time the hay has to be cut making sure nothing is lost. In winter the cows are cared for by hand in the stalls.

Working in such close harmony with nature, and with generations of experience behind them, I am now sure they know more about the influence of the moon on their work than Wikipedia does. If they have learned these lores from their ancestors and still apply this know-how today, then there must be something in it. And what works for one crop must also be relevant for house plants and when planting out in the garden.

On the day of writing this the moon calendar advised voice, speech, ears, nose and throat were vulnerable and should be protected. As it is 10 Celcius degrees below zero with an icy wind – that seems pretty sound. Whether I would ever notice whether it was a good or bad day for cleaning windows, I can’t say.

But my haircut on that “bad hair” day? Yes it really bears out the Moon Calendar advice, I should have stayed away. But then, as Evelyn said, it was too late by the time I found out.

Rising above Embach over the Baugkogerl - did the Moon really affect my haircut?