walking through a forest.
as musical accompaniment, a good old the cure tune - the song 'a forest'.
the taunus mountains are a constant part of my life, whenever i need a nature fix and a serious getaway from human beings, the woods of the taunus mountains are my go-to destination. since the taunus extends over 75 kms in length and 35 kms in width, there's lots of ground to cover. i've explored a lot of places already, especially in the anterior and high taunus parts, but there are still white dots on my taunus exploration card. especially places towards the east of the mountains and waaaaay up north ( the farther taunus mountains ). there's also some places in the west that i only slightly touched on. the taunus being a relatively small mountain range still won't ever be fully explored by me, because it would need to be a dedicated research project, where you at least would have to spend half a year roaming around. and that is time i don't have, clearly. but i think that would also take out the charm in exploring, because then you would know everything, and i think it's simply nicer to discover places not in one swoop, but little by little, getting enraptured again and again by the beauty hidden everywhere.
that brings me to a dilemma, though and that's that i think it's a real shame that we humans are only around for such a short amount of time, because quite frankly we are never going to see all of the world with approximately 80 years of living time. it's not even possible to see one whole country in your lifetime, so the world basically is a playground that can't be tackled ever. two weeks of vacations somewhere only show you a a tiny piece of a much bigger cake. and when you're ordinary people like me, and don't have a globetrotting career, well, that leaves you with a very small piece of cake. i know, i know, one should still be appreciative for that slice of pie, but sometimes, it can be quite bothersome to me. sometimes it'd be nice if we could extent our lifetimes a bit. even though i know that people are supposed to cram as much life into theirs as possible as long as they are alive, to make it worth it. maybe that should be a sign to tell my retail job goodbye and start an exploring endeavour. eke out a living by being a jack of all trades, taking odd jobs in all kinds of places every other month. that wouldn't get me through the whole world, but at least i would know all of germany ( maybe ).
it's tough being an unrecognized documentalist/archivist/explorer 😅
anyway, let's return to the topic at hand, a walk near a small mountain called kuhunter berg. it's about 414 m in altitude, so really, it's basically a hill. it is situated in the municipality of hohenstein ( i think ), though our hike led us past the vicinities of three villages, watzhahn, born and hettenhain. we walked through lots of woods, the tiny herbach valley near born, and past small fishing ponds near hettenhain, which is all you can ask for when out and about in the taunus mountains. there's no need for more. walking in nature is all you'll ever need to get away from busy city life. and after we had already made a big trip to weinheim the day prior, we needed a more toned down environment, more calm and balanced. since i had to work an early shift on that day, there was even more need to relax and quieten down. just something to decompress, right?
and that's exactly what doing a walk in the mountains provides. that's also the reason why i don't make much words this time, i think the pictures speak for themselves, no deeper explanations needed.
flower wood sorrels.
they were pretty darn cute.
spider twigs camouflaging.
we found a chair randomly hanging in the trees. in the middle of the woods. a riddle to be solved: how did it get there? do YOU have any ideas?
everywhere were blooming cherry trees, a very welcome and beautiful sight in the mountains, were green and brown are the most prevalent colours.
this hut was doing a good job doing its own kind of camouflage. it felt a little witchy 🧙🏻♀️
these meadows were at the outskirts of the little village born. it sits in a small valley where the tiny creek herbach flows through. you can see where it's running if you look very closely. it passes by the blossoming bushes in the back, then through the middle of this picture and to the left you can see a little rill engraved in the meadows. it's really super tiny.
here you can again see the creek line, it's between the small line of trees and the bigger bushy part in the back.
i was definitely more mesmerized with these bushes, though, that's for sure. i think these were either hawthorn or mirabelle bushes. either way, they are such a sight in spring!
some natural barriers crossed our way, which we had to circumnavigate.
whatever these bushes were, i clearly liked them a lot.
i'm almost inclined to say that they were mirabelle plum bushes, it wouldn't be such an absurd thought!
because the blossoms are very close to each other, strung together like chain links almost, and that's a typical sign of mirabelle trees.
found a swampy pond!
hello, shadow!
pretty sure there are some swamp fairies lurking around somewhere.
the herborn creek finally came to light when we were about to return to the woods.
in the woods near hettenhain we encountered some fish ponds. they belong to the taunus angelpark ( a paradise for fishermen ).
it was quite tranquil in these parts of the woods, especially with the late sun shining through the trees.
at last we passed by this wooden house, which was actually in the middle of nowhere, but maintained quite well! i guess it's used for forestry operations, or belongs to a hunting association. i would use it as my week-end house, duh! ;)
next on the easter menu is another trip to the bergstraße region, visiting the remains of an abbey, another castle and a former summer residence of landgraves and grand dukes of hessia-darmstadt.
stay curious!
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