More sun, same snow

Flashback to the first time I ever experienced strong sunlight on snow; it was 42 years ago, my first-ever skiing holiday to Courchevel in France, 1984. Dazzled by the sun reflecting off the pure white powder, and the blueness of the sky at high altitude, it made a lasting impression on the 26-year-old me. Prior to that, on the few occasions that it did snow in England, the sky was leaden, the temperature just slightly below freezing, and the snow never lasted long. One exception was the winter of 1962/1963, the coldest and snowiest in living memory (see bottom of this post). However, I remember the sky being much darker than the land

Below: looking south along ulica Kolejowa towards Krężel, the snow drifting in from an open field, driven by a westerly wind. Note the ice, packed down by car tyres. Dreadfully slippery.

Below: the Kormoran thunders through Krężel station, late again (half an hour at this stage), on its way from Olsztyn to Kraków.

Below: onward to Michalczew. I arrive in good time for the train back to Chynów. From the platform, I have a good view of the village. Hidden behind the trees towards the right of the photo is Michalczew's murder-mystery church (still unsolved).

Below: I catch the 12:11 from Michalczew back to Chynów. I find a seat in the last section of the last carriage, the part for carrying bicycles. Seating guaranteed on a day like today. No bikes.

Below: I live at the top of Kodachrome Lane; one of the XII Canonical Prospects of Jakubowizna. Any time of the year – as long as the sun is shining. Walking total today: 14,800 paces.

Below: early January 1963; just before my brother was born. I am outside our house (small figure on the right). My abiding memory was the darkness of the sky; the glass roof of our veranda was covered with snow making the interior of the back of the house much darker. And I remember the cold. Jack Frost on the inside of the window panes. Duffel coat, wellington boots, woollen gloves and scarf were inadequate, as was the lack of decent heating in the house. Photo by my father.

This time two years ago:
2023: A year in travel
[In 2024 Google enshittified Google Maps by removing the Timelines feature from the laptop app.]

This time three years ago:
Letters to the Postman

This time four years ago:
Progress at Warsaw West station
[Job finally finished in December 2025]

This time seven years ago:
From West London to South Warsaw

This time ten years ago:
Anger and hate have no place in political discourse
[Dream the fuck on.]

This time 12 years ago:
Is Conservatism rural or urban in nature?

This time 13 years ago:
Poland's roads get slightly less deadly

This time 14 years ago:
It's expensive being rich in Warsaw 

This time 16 years:
Winter commuting in colour and black & white

This time 17 years ago:
Zamienie in winter

This time 18 years ago:
Really cold (-12C at night)

Late-August photo round-up

Photos that haven't yet made it onto my blog, taken this month. Some usual, some unusual. Below: a snail racing along the asphalted service road adjacent to the S7 expressway, south of Warsaw airport.

Below: a large, white toadstool on the edge of an orchard in Jakubowizna. Sezon grzybowy – the mushroom foraging season – is coming. But don't pick these.

The sun sets earlier and earlier (19:25 today, an hour later than it will be on Equilux, which falls on 25 September). Below: here it approaches the horizon over the DK50, the turn-off for Chynów. 

Below: two ultralights flying overhead. There are two lądowiska (landing strips) nearby, Wincentów and Kukały, with a further three slightly further out (Słomczyn, Żyrów and Nowa Wieś near Warka). This means on clear days there's a fair amount of recreational flying Left: SP-STRT, a Polish-built Ekolot KR-030 Topaz, and right, SP-SVEG, a Slovenian-built  Pipistrel Virus SW.

Below: one of the best-known Canonical Prospects of Chynów. Beautiful light and cloud, enhanced with a circular polarising filter.

Below: horsy culture – riding stables, Dawidy. Photo taken from viaduct over the S2 expressway.

Below: late-August and the plums are perfect. Apples and pears not ripe yet; hop cones will soon be ready for picking. An extract of hop, diluted with cold water, makes for the perfect alcohol-free evening drink. Sleep is better.

Below: shadow selfie with bush-hat. 

Got to have a cat pic to end this round-up, so here are (from left) Pacuś, Arkcio and Céleste dining al fresco.The kittens are much bigger than a month a go, but are still kittens, and still a joy.

And finally, this one got a lot of likes on Facebook – a feline patrol coming out to greet me upon my return home. Scrapper (Skrapcio), followed by Pacyfik (Pacio), Czestuś, Arkturus (Arkcio) and Céleste.

This time two years ago:
Passing late-summer storm

This time five years ago:
"Sod the locals" 

This time six years ago:
If you're really concerned about global warming...

This time seven years ago:
The balance between the spiritual and the material

This time eight years ago:
End of August, end of summer?

This time nine years ago:
Pavement for Karczunkowska... a bit at least

This time 10 years ago:
Gold Train update (the hope! the expectations!)

This time 12 years ago:
Poland post the Rubbish Revolution

This time 13 years ago:
Poland's most beautiful street

This time 14 years ago:
Getting to grips with phrasal verbs

This time 16 years ago:
What Putin wrote about Molotov-Ribbentrop

This time 17 years ago:
Summer Sunday in the city

This time 18 years ago:
Last bike-ride to work of the summer

Fading and resurging Chynów in monochrome and colour

Below: an abandoned farmhouse on the unpaved track that leads down to Grobice from Jakubowizna. I have scrambled up a pile of soil to get this angle. The klimat fits my mood. Love that sky!

Below: I zoom in from the same vantage point. "Yes, we shall gather at the river..."

Below: "Are you men from the bank?" Foreclosed dust-bowl farm, Oklahoma, 1935 vibe. One of the XII  Canonical Prospects of Jakubowizna. From the Eastern Canon.

Below:  once a roadside bar. Long since closed. One day in late 2007, the DK50 bypass opened and truck-drivers no longer wanted to stop here. Dead tree adds to klimat.

Below: another, grander former roadside bar with lodgings. Again, long since closed. The old DK50, as it runs through Chynów today is quiet – and much safer. 

Below: further on up the road. The viaduct that carries the road coming into Chynów from Sułkowice and the north, crossing over the DK50 bypass.

Below: from the embankment, I turn slightly to my left and zoom in on the agricultural scenes below. Orchards and arable. Well-tended, well invested.

Schumpeterian destruction: the economy giveth, the economy taketh away. My observations of Chynów right now are of a town that's rapidly growing. New shops, new houses, new infrastructure. People happier, friendlier. Long may the line on the graph point upward.

This time last year:
Imminent? I don't think so
[Biggest UFO/UAP-related news this year – correlation between pre-Sputnik transients and major UFO flaps and nuclear tests]

This time two years ago:
Dawn tourism – the sights without the crowds

This time three years ago:
Bike ride to the past

This time five years ago:

Muscle memory

This time seven years ago:
The journey there, and the journey back again

This time eight years ago:
Sandomierz – another outstanding Polish town to see

This time ten years ago:
Food hygiene and lies as Russian foreign policy tools

This time 11 years ago:
Asphalt for ul. Poloneza (to Krasnowolska at least)

This time 12 years ago:
A welcome splash of colour to a drab car park 

This time 13 years ago:
To Hel and back in 36 hours

This time 15 years ago:
Honing the Art of the Written Word

This time 16 years ago:
Of castles, dams and brass bands

You can't reduce away the magic

Yes! Here it is! Something so routine – the daily walk – and, of a sudden I catch it, I grasp hold of it, I live it, I document it. This is it... The magickal moment. Don't let it fade! Relish it with every sense. The warmth of the sun's rays on my skin. The scents of a late-spring evening. The blackbirds' banter. The familiar sights, familiar over lifetimes. Life on Earth.

Take a look around... Between Grabina, Grobice and Adamów Rososki, the sun getting lower in the sky.

This is the joy. Cement it in my memory. To the end of this life and into the next ones. Nostalgia for the present. 

The moment passes. "Magical moment, the spell it is breaking". I walk away and look back from the distance. At the bottom of the hill I turn around to look back. One of the XII Canonical Prospects. 

Below: a few seconds later, I turn and catch this young male roe deer between two orchards. I still have the long lens on the camera; we stare at one another momentarily, the deer turns and darts off to the right.

I track down the source of the scent to this flower, which back home Google Lens identifies as Philadelphus coronarius (sweet mock orange or jaśminowiec wonny). Wikipedia describes it as being "valued for its profuse sweetly scented white blossom in early summer". The air is full of this perfume. It is beautiful. Imbue qualia with meaning.

Heading home, my phone notifies me of a number of YouTube podcasts that might interest me. One grabs my attention: Sabine Hossenfelder talking about qualia! This I must listen to! Ms Hossenfelder (1.7m subscribers), is, along with Neil Degrasse Tyson and Sean Carroll, a great science populariser, with a talent to explain complex concepts. All three, however, share one major flaw – they are materialist-reductionists, for whom the slightest whiff of the spiritual is anathema.

I listened to her podcast – twice; I'd recommend it.

She says: “the 'hard problem of consciousness' is the idea that even if you understand  all the physical processes in the brain,  you still haven’t explained why experience  feels the way it does. This philosophical view made qualia seem almost mystical, cut off from scientific investigation. I’ve always thought this is bullshit. You can measure what’s going on in the brain." 

You can indeed. But you can't equate neuronal activity to consciousness. So what that you can match the neural correlates of brains of people seeing the colour red? I'd compare that to those scientists who, in 1952, after Urey and Miller famously turned inorganic compounds into organic compounds, claimed that science has just discovered how life began. And therefore there's no need for any metaphysical explanation for abiogenesis (the leap from non-life to life). It's one thing to create organic compounds out of primordial soup by passing high voltages through it, it's quite another to create the simplest single-celled organism that will feed and breed. It's one thing to turn chemistry into complex organic chemistry. It's quite another to turn chemistry into biology. It's one thing to say "roughly the same thing is going on in human brains when they see red" and another to say "we can reduce complex emotional responses, feelings, memories and qualia down to electrical currents passing through the brain". 

To my surprise, the overwhelming majority of the comments under the video gives Ms Hossenfelder a right good kicking on this one. The magic of what it is to experience life cannot be reduced away by physicalism.

This time three years ago:
Blues and greens of early June

This time six years ago:
This land is my land
[when I bought the orchard adjacent to my dzialka]

This time nine years ago:
Preening stork

This time 12 years ago:
Preserving meadowland – UK and Poland 

This time 13 years ago:

Poland's transport infrastructure progress

This time 14 years ago:
Cara al Sol - a short story

This time 15 years ago:
Pumping out the floodwater

This time 16 years ago:
To Góra Kalwaria and beyond

This time 17 years ago:
Developments in Warsaw's exurbs

The XII Canonical Prospects of Jakubowizna in Winter (Without Snow)

It will be a long time before the XII Canonical Prospects of Jakubowizna are finally agreed upon, and their order. No doubt there will be schisms along the way; which Prospects make the cut and which are relegated to the Apocrypha or judged to be Gnostic Prospects. Aesthetes and scholars will debate. Slowly though, the Canon will take shape; across the year's four seasons, across mornings, middays, afternoons, evenings and night. Each canonical image must, however, be linked to unalloyed, genuine qualia moments that resonate deeply with my soul, stirring unbidden memories.

Part I: The Western Canon

Below: takes me back to my strongest past-life memories. Road running alongside the railway track between Chynów and Sułkowice.

Below: one of my most favourite experiences is that of walking towards the sun, into the wind. The sun and wind, in my face. And with an interesting cloud formation that casts my mind back. 

Below: general view of the north-west corner of Jakubowizna, on leaving the station.

Below: up the lane from the station towards my działka. The familiar way. The way home.

Below: looking north from the lane into the side road that goes off towards Grobice; birches, pines, houses old and new.

Part II: The Eastern Canon

Left: looking north towards Grobice down the path from Jakubowizna, flanked on either side by orchards – apples, pears and cherries. The local council wanted to widen this path and asphalt it, but landowners wouldn't sell enough land alongside the path needed to allow for the prescribed width. And so grass triumphs, and I must say, I'm rather glad. Lack of asphalt means I live on what's effectively a no-through road to all vehicles except tractors and mud-pluggers.

Below: Foreclosed. "Are you men from the bank?" Deserted cottage on the path from Jakubowizna to Grobice. Moon rising. Jet overhead.

Below: the row of silver birches at the forest's edge. Darkness brings foreboding as one approaches, but in broad daylight an uplifting scene. 

Below: from Grobice the path rises towards Grabina. Dry. The soil is dry for the time of year. It's below freezing overnight, but no snow; no snow cover in winter presages drought in spring.

Below: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." (– Y. Berra). Left to Grabina, right to Adamów Rososki. 

Below: the path from Adamów Rososki to Machcin II. The debate is whether this view or the reverse view (from the end of this path) makes the grade as 'canonical'.

Below: the forest is much less dense than it was before the last government's state forestry service, Lasy Państwowe, felled as many trees as possible ahead of the election. Still, a beautifully wistful scene, any time of year.

Nearly home – from here, about ten minutes to my kitchen; on with the kettle for a hot drink and then make me some food. 

Which prospects will make the Canon?

This time six years ago:
Fairness, simplicity, taxation and a sustainable society

This time seven years ago:
Polish beer cans in the UK: new shit has come to light

This time nine years ago:
Lent, a time to cleanse and reflect

This time 11 years ago:
It was 50 years ago today... Beatles arrive in New York

This time 13 years ago:
Adventures in the Screen Trade – the truth about Hollywood

This time 14 years ago:
The sad end of Andrzej J.

This time 17 years ago:
Today's dose of wintery gorgeousness

This time 11 years ago:
First intimations of spring

Up and down with the weather part II

Not the weather I'd been given to expect from the forecast on my phone. Within minutes of my setting off on my walk, a dark cloud rolled in swiftly from the north-west, bringing with it an immense flurry of wet snow. The temperature was about +1°C, though windchill and damp made it feel much colder. Below: one of the XII Canonical Prospects of Jakubowizna & District in blizzard conditions.

Within minutes, however, the blizzard had blown itself out. By the time I'm through the woods, out on the other side by Machcin II, the cloud has scudded by, having relieved itself of mountains of snow.

It turns out quite nice again. Below: on the path that follows the border between Jakubowizna (on the right) and Gaj Żelechowski (on the left). Note the hazel catkins in full bloom (left), which they do in Poland from early February to early April.

By the time I get to ulica Kolejowa, the sun is shining brightly, illuminating the signal posts and pylons.

But before long, another dark cloud rushed in from the north-west, bringing more snow; large, wet flakes covering my coat. A mere 1,200 paces from home, I am worrying about the snow building up around my camera.

I spin round to catch the southbound Żeromski InterCity express as it rushes through towards Chynów station on its way to Kraków from Olsztyn via Warsaw.

I am cold, wet, hungry, tired – but not miserable; the lane home and 600 paces left.

Home again. Kettle on, feed the kitten, upload photos.

It would turn out to be an eventful night, but that's for the next post...

This time six years ago:
Justify the buy – Nikkor 10-20mm zoom lens

This time 12 years ago:
The Big Melt

This time 15 years ago:
Waiting for the meltdown

This time 17 years ago:
Warsaw's inadequate airport

Sleepy time, Christmas to Three Kings

Christmas Eve still isn't a public holiday in Poland, but Three Kings (6 January) is. Passed by Sejm (the Polish parliament) in September 2010 and a day off work since 2011, it pushes the number of statutory holidays in Poland up to 11 (compared to the UK's eight). The temptation to extend the bridge days between Christmas and the New Year right up to Three Kings means that far fewer people are working normally, hitting Poland's productivity and therefore GDP. 

And so my Facebook feed is full of photos of Bali, Hawaii, Turkey and Dubai – however, for those with an eco-conscience, the slack period is a good time for reflection and local walks. As I mentioned in my last post, I have been doing circular walks around Jakubowizna village checking to see if anyone has put up posters advertising a lost kitten (as yet, they haven't). Photos in reverse chronological order...

Around dusk (sunset is now quarter of an hour after the year's earliest; slowly we emerge from darkness). Pavement all the way from the edge of the village to the railway station. Yesterday's snow all but gone.

Below: approaching Jakubowizna from Machcin II. A recently completed house and one under construction to the left of the road. And other one under construction behind the new house, and a building plot advertised for sale on the other side of the road.

Below: the forest between Jakubowizna and Adamów Rososki, looking towards Jakubowizna. One of the XII Canonical Prospects.

Back to work today – I feel it will be a good year for Poland's economy nonetheless.

Bonus photos: the southbound InterCity Kolberg hammering through Chynów station along the 'up' (northbound) line. It is running precisely to time, and somewhere between Chynów and Krężel it will overtake the local southbound Koleje Mazowieckie service.

Below: the northbound InterCity San crosses ulica Spokojna on the border of Chynów and Węszelówka; the train (from Przemyśl to Warsaw) is running two hours late.

I hope for a year of interesting travels around Poland.

This time last year:
Trains in the snow around Chynów

This time seven years ago:
New football pitch for Jeziorki

This time eight years ago:
The Winter Sublime

This time 14 years ago:
Long train running

This time 15 years ago:
Most Poniatowskiego

This time 17 years ago:
Warsaw well prepared for winter