General Index

Dwight Clark Peck, Jr is a quiet, gracefully-aging gentleman who has managed so far to keep more or less out of harm's way.

He "grew up" in northern New Jersey in the United States of America, and whilst living in that country fetched up on two world record track-and-field relay teams at the University of Kansas and clutching a PhD in Renaissance Literature in Ohio. Not to mention an MLS master's degree in library and archival science in Rhode Island (and some other BAs and MAs -- eleven long years in university!). And he taught in universities, too, for quite a while, the History of Ideas of all improbable things, and 16th-century Renaissance Lit, along with lots and lots of Freshman English and Intro to Poetry, in Ohio, Oklahoma, oh where not? Uncountable late nights poring over nasty old books and microfilm readers, grubbing about amongst crumbly manuscripts in archives and public records offices in England, and rather a short bibliography to show for it in the end. Most of his research publications had to do with political propaganda and espionage in the 1580s -- a field in which no one could make a decent living even in the1580s, let alone now. Shakespeare was his favorite subject to teach, until after a while he was embarrassed to discover that all the best bits made him want to cry.

Since (pretty unnerved by the Vietnam Thing) he moved to Switzerland 34 years ago, Mr Peck has been dabbling at lots of odds and ends, but mainly playing about in the mountains. He was considered amongst his friends to be one of the better uphill afterwork nighttime skiers, inspired in the more extreme applications of telemark skis fitted with crosscountry bindings and sealskins on the bottom, with a couple of headlamps on. Getting back down was always trickier, naturally; but with his full share of broken bones he nearly always managed to do so. And lots of non-competitive snowcaving, potentially a new rage sport. And then a lot of monster running, too, over the mountains and across the glaciers and down in the wooded dales, until in the end his knees went off to join the Long Fathers, so now semi-crippled walking-wise he works at less energetic hobbies like prancing about on snowshoes and looking for long downhills on his Scott mountainbike, called "Humvee", and his LeMond Tourmaley road bike called "Greg", depending upon the season.

ACS and Leysin

ACS. Mr Peck worked for many years at the American College of Switzerland, formerly an independent US-accredited liberal arts college located in Leysin, a ski resort in the Vaudoise Alps, and as Head Librarian he built the 50,000-volume ACS library from scratch. And was Academic Dean from time to time when required. The American College went bankrupt in 1991 and lingers on only as a fond memory, though the building and the name were still being used, somewhat blasphemously, by a commercial

La Tour de Famelon, circa 1983

educational fastfood chain, in disgraceful conditions, until in 2009 the Battered Old ACS finally left this earth. And his library sits up there on the mountain, with moss growing on it. [We've been told that former ACS students can obtain transcripts from the successor institution's campus in Florida.]

YOU OLD LEYSINOUDS, YOU FROFIES, Webmaster Dan Urlich is the keeper of the flame for the Free Republic of Feydey and Leysin in general -- visit the FROF Web site, and sign in on the guestbook (http://www.frof.ch/).

The Jura. In 1992, seriously unemployed after the College's passage into History, Mr Peck sold his chalet in Leysin -- SOB! -- and moved "to the valley!", in the Geneva-Lausanne axis (to Gimel, then to Trélex, then to Bassins near Nyon, and now to Féchy). It's a comedown from the Alps to the Jura mountains, true enough, but the southwest Jura is not without its mountainy charms, and so now we've got a nearly inexhaustible collection of photos of the local sites, including Jura farms in winter, caverns in the snowy forest floor, even the Jura anthills, all to remind us that continuously good fun can be had almost wherever in this world you may be, as long as it's in Switzerland.

Ramsar. Coming off a few years as Librarian of the American Library of Geneva, Mr Peck has since become an earnest environmentalist, toiling long hours in the casual uniform of Communications Officer of the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971), or the "Ramsar Convention". Ramsar is the world's first global treaty for conservation and sustainable management of natural resources -- there are presently 160 nations that are Contracting Parties to the Convention, and its secretariat is housed with The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Gland, Switzerland. Some 1,960 wetlands round the world, over 190 million hectares' worth (1,900,000 km2), are presently covered by the Ramsar umbrella. Here's a brief history of Mr Peck's sojourn with Ramsar, and here is a link to the Ramsar Convention website, which ought to answer all of your swamp, marsh, bog, fen, estuary, coral reef, near-shore marine, and peatland questions or make you wish you hadn't asked.

Not that bad a job, ain't it; better than making munitions or cigarettes, or innovative fertilizers. (Update February 2010: Mr Peck is now officially semi-retired, henceforward working 50% as Documentation Officer, preparing official documents and publications.)

Neat kids

Here's Kid One: Alison lives in Chile, where she's presently the Deputy Project Scientist building the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array project (ALMA). What with at least one meeting or another in Europe every year, she comes to see the Old Dad fairly frequently -- here are the links -- and one of these days we're going to go visit her as well. In the meantime, Alison and her Mark have also come along to hike with us in Wisconsin in the summer of 2010, and they've got married in Hawaii in April 2011. Following all which, Alison's been over to Switzerland for a week of January hiking in the Jura.

Kid Two: Deirdre is no longer with us, but when she was, she was the greatest. We won't even try to describe what she was like. For more pix, click on the photo here.

Kid Three (left): Marlowe spent her first decade in Switzerland, then lived in England for three & a half years and came to visit every other weekend throughout that time. Thence to the USA, and as soon as possible afterward, off to Canada for university. Not too long ago, Mar and her inamorato Dima got married in Vermont, July 2006 and are hanging out in Ottawa, Canada, and she's been over for a visit to Switzerland in June and July 2007. She's also been out to see us on the northern Wisconsin lakes in 2009 and sign up as a marriage witness for the Old Dad, and back to the same lakes with us in 2010, and again in 2011. In the meantime, she's just had a baby, 8 March 2011, referred to as 'William Tyson Clark Filippov', and brought him along to show off in Wisconsin in July 2012.

Summer 2008. One of the best yet (but we always say that). I counted only one day above 30°C (86°F), when we had to put the big fan on in the office and blew all the papers off the desk. This is the year of the Conference of the Contracting Parties, coming up in South Korea in late October, so we're repairing grammar and aligning fonts and margins pretty much nonstop throughout the year, but we've snatched away some wholesome fun nevertheless. Kristin was here in May, and along with a little hiking about and sightseeing we got to spend some more time dashing around Rome (Italy) [Vatican museum, photo left] viewing improving cultural things and eating. Once the July deadlines were got over, Kristin came back in August for some long hikable weekends in the Bernese Oberland, first at the Pension Sonnenberg above Mürren over near the Eiger and Jungfrau and what not, and then at the Rosenlaui berghotel above Meiringen, also not too far from the Eiger, the Jungfrau, and what not. Now, just a little documentary torture for a few months and a kind of catatonic frenzy in Changwon, South Korea, for two weeks, and with any luck we'll be back here scanning the skies for snow by mid-November. And perhaps, with 25 leave days left for this year, some traveling as well.

Which way to the snow?

Winter 2007-2008. After a bad snow winter last year - a bad snow winter. Just back from visiting Kristin in Boston and hiking all over the coast of Maine in October, we're welcoming Kristin again in late November for an excellent week of hiking all round the beautiful island of Corsica, as well as a look-in at the P'tite Auberge at the Lac de Taney for some exceptional snowshoeing and dinners. Then good snow, and Christmas in Ollon with the Doctors Durham, and some more good snowshoe explorations in early January. Then . . . then, alas . . . Pres. Bush's Global Warming kicked in with a vengeance, in western Switzerland anyway, and the Jura hiking, though beautiful as always, was not snowy. In a month-long break between two big meetings at work, Kristin came in February for a bronchitis revisit to the Lac de Tanay and a long weekend in fascinating Bergamo. Then, finally, and evidently to celebrate Easter, God kindly dumped a ton of snow on us - more fun for the long weekend in late March than you could shake a taser at - but a fortnight later, it melted. Alison, in Europe for meetings, came in from Chile in late April, and Kristin has come back for much of May, with some of that in Rome again, where I'll be joining her tomorrow. Now, loins are being girded for a reluctantly workaholic summer and the giant 10th meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties in South Korea in October-November.

Summer 2007. Exceptionally privileged. Northern Europe was all flooded and cold, and Spain and Greece were burnt nearly to a Mediterranean crisp, but in Switzerland there has never been a finer summer, if you're a fan of sunny cool days with a fresh breeze. People who love trickling with sweat lying on beaches were very badly served here, but Anti-heatists basked, with scarcely a few days above 30°C (86°F). Following on from a wandering-about hikey sort of trip to Ireland in April, it was back to work for a while, until from mid-June the Social Whirl became dervishish. Marlowe, newly graduated from college in Canada, forsook her Dima for three weeks so that we could revisit some of her favorite castles from the old days, and then Kristin neatly overlapped with her for a few days in early July -- leading on to a visit to the Lac de Salanfe with Joe and Teny and several days chasing all round Prague. Alison showed up from Chile in mid-September -- Kristin was meant to visit, too, in late September, but by the time we got round to booking the ticket, the best airfare from Boston to Geneva was twice the price from Geneva to Boston, which settled that question. So we got in a rewarding week on the coast of Maine in the USA, hiking on Mount Desert Island in Acadia National Park, and suffered through the late stages of Boston's horrific heat spell in early October for a week.

Special Features

Farms of the Jura: A photo series on the communal farms of the Swiss Jura mountains in the dead of winter -- growing like Topsy, some 75 or 80 wintry farms up now, and only one taken down because of a private-property owner's concerns about increased littering on the premises.

Holes of the Jura: The Swiss Jura, in the Mont Tendre region, is made largely of limestone and in many places has washed out in dark holes and chimneys small, medium-sized, and frequently gigantic. There's great sport to be had in seeking them out in the snow, darting up close for a snapshot, and backpedaling frantically, giggling in triumph. The Grand Search for Holes. [gazing in fascination into a hole, photo left]

Mountain photos on this Web site: An unassuming index to this website's photos of undramatic but nonetheless beautiful mountains in the Préalps and Jura of Switzerland and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere. Forty-odd mountains so far and still counting.

Snowshoeing in the Jura: Rudimentary lessons on how to go about enjoying this popular winter sport, and mainly on how not to.

Anthills of the Jura. The BBC cares, and maybe we all should! Here are photos of some of the most alluring anthills in western Switzerland, which tops all of Europe for its wood-ant anthills. Much more formidable ones in Uganda, though. Dig in.

Steamships of Lake Geneva (Lac Léman). The fleet of eight "Belle Epoque" lake steamers and assorted other vessels, on Lake Geneva and selected other lakes elsewhere Climb aboard.

Forest refuges of the Jura. Photos and descriptions of a bunch of little one-room huts stuck out in the forest, good to memorize in case you twist your knee someday out there whilst hiking along dreaming of your future career triumphs and not watching where you're going. Crawl in here.

Various travels: Despite exceptionally strong instincts towards gazing for long hours off the balcony at Swiss scenic vistas with a chilled bottle of beer firmly in hand, from time to time Mr Peck has been gratefully dragged away to other venues. Selected travels and visits since about 1980.

Physiognomy (Herr Peck's and a few others): an essay on faces and what they sometimes reveal or don't. (And Kristin's as well.)

Something else

Big story. Castle-Come-Down - faith and doubt in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. Rather a lengthy tale of nasty court politics in England in the 1570s and 1580s and, in France, espionage, murder, and general mayhem in aid of Mary Queen of Scots and/or the Spanish Armada. It's a "true story", too (right!). Illustrations included in the Web version (not in the 1.7mb PDF). Advance to the index page (no credit cards or adult authentication required).

Slightly smaller but still pretty big story. Derborence - a new translation (by Dwight) of Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz's classic tale (1934) of peasant life in the Swiss Alps in the 18th century, when the back half of the Diablerets mountains fell off and buried all of the summer high-mountain livestock grazers -- but, months later, one of them came home! And then went back! The great plan was to illustrate the story with lots of evocative photos of the place today, but for the moment the haunting Ramuzian prose will have to suffice. This is a must read for all sentimental mountaineers, nostalgic peasants, and unashamed poetical spirits who admire family values and ghostlike apparitions. Advance to the Intro page.

Quite a few more stories, some perhaps semi-true. Robert Dudley (1532?-1588), Earl of Leicester and Queen Elizabeth's long-time favorite, was the subject of scandal from the very beginnings of the Elizabethan era in England (1558-1603). Study of the black legends surrounding his life, times, and putative crimes provides insights into the political, social, religious, and administrative history of Britain and lots and lots of furtive and ribald fun. Mr Peck spent many pleasant hours pursuing these matters and writing up his results, quite a few years ago, and more recently, scanning them and posting them all here. At least all of them that can still be found under piles of NYRBs and behind the sofa cushions. Here is a menu of 16th century diatribes, libels, and screeds, parental guidance encouraged for some of them.

Hint for students of human psychology and social behavior: Study Brownian motion.

Q.: Do you know why you're here? A.: No, I'm afraid not. Q.: Well, do you have any questions then? A.: No. Can't really think of any.

Dwight Peck, Switzerland (, www.dpeck.info) Last updated, 4 February 2012

Mont Blanc and Lake Geneva from home

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