Newsflash: it is really cold in Copenhagen.
The wind makes its down every hall and every narrow street. Sometimes the pattern of where I walk is decided more as a matter of where the wind is blowing than where I want to go. But, while the people of Copenhagen are taking the whole business-as-usual principle to the extreme by biking and functioning on negative degree weather, the landscape is not having it. There are no lively plants or fervent green squares. No magnificent flowers or the sweet smell of soil. Trees are striped to their bones and birds are left hiding among the stick piles that are bushes.
But the landscape is not as desolate as it sounds; there is life in hidden corners, in between the cobble stones of streets, and in the window ledges of elaborate facades. These leaves I picked up this week are the only piece of greenery that the wind left for Denmark. This ivy is a survivor. It hangs from trees, fences, walls, as if it's saying "giving up? I don't think so." It surprises me how often I see this ivy. It is as if it is trying to reassure me that the spring will come. Much like the Danes, it crawls upon surfaces unnoticed. It is not trying to be showy, or overpower the earth is it growing from. It lays passively upon the surface of random places and reminds us that nature is always there, green and unfaced.
This ivy is what I want to be while I am here. Whenever the wind is blowing too hard, or the climate gets too harsh to handle, I want to hang on and bring beauty. Whenever Danish gets too hard and the whole Viking diet gets overwhelming, I want to show the rest of the bigger plants and trees that I can flourish.
The wind makes its down every hall and every narrow street. Sometimes the pattern of where I walk is decided more as a matter of where the wind is blowing than where I want to go. But, while the people of Copenhagen are taking the whole business-as-usual principle to the extreme by biking and functioning on negative degree weather, the landscape is not having it. There are no lively plants or fervent green squares. No magnificent flowers or the sweet smell of soil. Trees are striped to their bones and birds are left hiding among the stick piles that are bushes.
But the landscape is not as desolate as it sounds; there is life in hidden corners, in between the cobble stones of streets, and in the window ledges of elaborate facades. These leaves I picked up this week are the only piece of greenery that the wind left for Denmark. This ivy is a survivor. It hangs from trees, fences, walls, as if it's saying "giving up? I don't think so." It surprises me how often I see this ivy. It is as if it is trying to reassure me that the spring will come. Much like the Danes, it crawls upon surfaces unnoticed. It is not trying to be showy, or overpower the earth is it growing from. It lays passively upon the surface of random places and reminds us that nature is always there, green and unfaced.
This ivy is what I want to be while I am here. Whenever the wind is blowing too hard, or the climate gets too harsh to handle, I want to hang on and bring beauty. Whenever Danish gets too hard and the whole Viking diet gets overwhelming, I want to show the rest of the bigger plants and trees that I can flourish.