Some months ago, I wrote about Andy Goldsworthy’s art and his collaboration with nature. Every minute since I saw the documentary about his work, namely Rivers and Tides, I wanted to learn the art of rock balancing. The art of rock balancing goes way back. I even found photographies of cairns and other balancing sculptures from England, Hawaii, Alaska, Scotland, Canada etc. First time I came to Vancouver, I saw a big stone figure representing human form in Stanley Park not really knowing that it was my first Inukshuk. After seeing my first Inukshuk I tried to find more information about this kind of art, and  so I came across the information about a sculptor and performance artist, Bill Dan. The art of rock balancing has become his passion numero uno. I found this video in which he is teaching the art of rock balancing:

I still can’t believe that we didn’t get a chance to cycle many thousands kilometres in Norway this year. I am really angry, but I know that as time goes by angriness will start to ease. In the meantime, we are trying to watch documentaries and read as much as possible about others’ bike adventures to compensate our hungriness for adventures. Some days ago we saw the documentary about Mark Beaumont’s quest to break the World Record for cycling around the world. His achievement and cycling was remarkable, but his documentary was just terrible. We never got a sense of who he was nor did he gave any indication of what his soul was made of or why he did this. Nowdays he’ll start cycling 15 thousand miles of road from Anchorage, Alaska to Ushuaia in Southern Argentina. He’ll also climb the two highest peaks on the continent, McKinley and Aconcagua, and we can follow him online on his ‘Cycling the Americas’ blog. I hope that his reports this time will include more of worldly drama than just  internal struggle and moaning.  

The Norwegian percussionist, Terje Isungset has been making his instruments out of ice for the last twenty years. His trumpet has been carved from a 2500 years old glacier:

“We travel to a place, find ice, then carve the instruments there, play the concerts, and then give the instruments back to nature where they belong. You can have 100 pieces of ice; they will all sound different. Perhaps three will sound fantastic. Nature decides whether it’s possible to play or not: if it’s too mild or windy, we can’t. There is a difference between natural ice and factory ice–the ice from the factories is dead and has no sound.”

I love the idea of using the instruments just for one concert and then giving it back to nature. Just splendid, and since everything nowdays goes eco, goes green, why not the music as well.

This is a picture of Lillian Alling, the Russian woman who hiked all the way from New York to Alaska via Canada and to her homeland in 1927. Lillan Alling was “The Woman Who Walked to Russia” from British Columbia according to the legend and to Australian writer and historian Cassandra Pybus who wrote  a book with same title, only that the woman of the title in her book was nowhere to be found.  Namely, I bought this book because I wanted to find out more about Lillan Alling and her travel back in 1927, but instead of a travel book and an adventure story I got a relationship story between writer Cassandra and her Australian friend Gerry. The title of the book is misleading, but I still will recommend the first 50 pages of it. After that you can stop ’cause ten minutes searching on the Internet will give you more information about Lillian Alling. I really don’t get it why Cassandra titled this book ‘The woman who walked to Russia’ when she could title it ‘Cassandra Pybus drove to Alaska’. Really disappointing!