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 Dwight Peck's personal website
Holes
of the Jura
The
Winter Sport for all members of the family
(except the small ones)
The
search for more holes, spring 2002
Still
recovering from having spent the winter of 2000-2001 seeking out all the Jura
farms in their isolated winter finery, obsessive
friend of snowy forests D. C. Peck, strangely attracted by the simple but profound
joys of stalking through forest hollows of the Jura mountains of Switzerland,
on the constant lookout for limestone holes for not falling into, gathered friends
about him and went off in search of still more holes.
A
photographic catalogue of all or most of the holes of at least sofa size was envisaged,
but as it turned out 93% of the photographs looked (allowing for shadows) identical,
so here are only a few of them.
Well,
for starters, here's a honker, which Drs Pirri and Peck stumbled across -- no,
that's the wrong phrase -- 'noticed timely', in the Creux d'Enfer du Petit
Cunay on 16 February 2002. What's that down there in the hole?
Oh,
it's just a bedspring that someone has thrown down there to help keep folks from
investigating the bottom of the hole involuntarily. "Creux
d'Enfer" means something like "Hell Hollow",
and there are a sizable number of them to be found all about the Swiss Jura in
the Mont Tendre region, all looking, in any season, like something out of Tolkien's
nightmares.
"Good
work, Dr Pirri!" Here's another one for the catalogue. Likewise in
the Creux d'Enfer du Petit Cunay, between the buttress of Petit Cunay and the
headland of Druchaux, not far from Mont Tendre. Let's nudge closer and peek in.
The
Jura-hole-cataloguer {i.e., Mr Peck} with the point-and-shoot camera, on 16 February
2002, was unable to persuade Dr Pirri, who is normally quite suggestible, to clamber
down a ways and see where this went, or whether there was a bedspring down in
there somewhere to keep the cows out.
Nonetheless,
this find is a significant one and earns a prominent place for Dr Pirri in the
Catalogue of Holes.
[Actually, the Glacier de Druchaux, a few hundred meters
away, is ranked about 100-something for deepest holes in the world. Look it up
on your Google.]
Another
one! Many thanks again, Dr Pirri. Pausing in his march up out of the Creux d'Enfer
towards the ridgeline at Perce-Neige, Joe glances backward in horror.
Here's
a little boy, scarcely worth reporting here. It might gobble up a couple of kids,
but would likely leave us "larger folks" only with an embarrassed grin
and perhaps a broken leg.
Dr
Pirri. Dr Pirri! There are massive great Jura limestone holes on either
side of you. Mind your step.
and
don't look down to your right. What an unwelcome thing to come upon unwitting
whilst off for a quiet postprandial stroll through the forest glades of an evening.
"Prof.
Durham bestrides the narrow limestone forest floor like a colossus" . . .
Well, that's one literary allusion that she won't like. 9
March 2002, Monsieur Pirri leads Profs L. Durham and D. Peck, in the Grand Croset
forest on the far side of Mont Tendre, into a maze of disguised holes and underground
limestone cavities.
They
seem to be everywhere - Watch your step!
The
search for still more holes, spring 2002
Cinema
enthusasiast Dr Pirri was amiably ambling in the greater Geneva area, 23 February
2002, in search of art films with Slovak subtitles in any one of a hundred tiny
high-brow theatres that cater to bearded intellectuals, but somehow, in his reverie,
got off course, and . . .
he
wandered into a forest glade, with the triangular Swiss warning sign on it.
Dr
Pirri, recalling his unsuccessful search
for angels earlier in the year in almost exactly this part of the world, soon
became curious, and began to muse deeply but speedily upon subtle connections
between art films and warning signs, of which it turns out there are many.
And
so Dr Pirri, like so many artsy types, approached too close and -- whoops!
-- almost fell in.
A
long ways down. Seeking art films in that basement theatre would cure many
cinema critics of their vice.
One of
the classic Jura limestone come-hithers, this one lies just behind the massif
of the Grand Cunay, on the French side.
Dr.
Pirri, once picked up and sorted out, concludes that this artistic warning sign
is just an ordinary warning sign, and so he plunges on elsewhere through the snow
in search of funky fine art . . .
.
. . with uplifted gaze, as if art were coming from the sky.
 Feedback
and suggestions are welcome if positive, resented if negative,  .
All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 10 May 2002, revised 22 November 2013.
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