Mountains on the wall
Nov. 25th, 2013 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaI think I may have remembered to mention last spring that, since Luleå is lacking only mountains to make it a perfect place to live, I decided that I wanted mountains my bedroom wall, and ordered wall paper printed from a photo. It was a rather difficult decision as to which mountains, since there are so many pretty ones in this world, but, eventually, I decided that they should be mountains that are, in some way, significant to me. However, I have rarely owned a camera and even more rarely remembered to take photos, so I didn't have any nice photos of my own to choose from, and was reduced to hunting the internet for something I liked enough that I would want to see it every morning when I opened my eyes.
After some poking around I found a photo which required only a bit of photo shop work to improve the contrast and make the grey overcast day a bit brighter and more cheerful. The result:
When I sent it off to the wall paper printing company they wrote back to ask if it is supposed to be that purple, and I replied that on my screen there was more blue than purple overtones, so she sent me a small print out to see if I was happy with it. Her print, was, in fact, slightly more purple than on my screen, but the morning after it arrived I went for a walk, and the morning light turned the sky here exactly that shade of purple, so I decided we would go with it, and I gave the go ahead to have the wall paper printed. That was March. It has been sitting in a box on the shelf here ever since.
Till this weekend, when we had exactly the right sort of house guests. Our friends K & H were here visiting. We entertained them by playing games, baking cookies, hanging wall paper with them, going for a walk in the forest, and taking a sauna. Wallpaper turns out to be easy to put up when there are four people working on it, two of whom are tall enough to reach the ceiling without standing on anything besides the floor itself. It was a lovely weekend, and I am very, very happy with the result of of the paper hanging. It is so nice to have mountains covering the wall. I am also amused at how the positioning of them turned out. The photo must have been taken from the Glen Highway (Alaska highway #1) somewhere near (give or take a few miles) point B on this map, looking southwards. The wall we put it on is a south facing wall, so, as I lie in bed looking at the mountains, I am looking in the same direction as I would be if I were really there. I did not do this on purpose! But I am delighted that it worked out that way.
Were you to consult a map that shows the names of mountain ranges +/- the geology of the area you would see that the mountains in the photo are the north end of the Chugach Range, and that the Talkeetna Range would have been to the back of the photographer. The highway follows a river valley, which, in turn, follows the path of a major glacier that has long since melted back to its source roots in the mountains, and the glacier, in turn, followed the fault zone between the two mountain ranges, because the rocks of the fault zone were broken up and more easily eroded than those outside of the fault zone.
At the time I choose the photo I did so because it happens to show one of my favourite stretches of the highway between Anchorage and Sourdough, where my Aunt and Uncle and their five boys lived. We visited them at least twice a year (often more) between moving to Alaska in 1975 and the first time I moved away in 1986. Therefore I have driven past this point at least 20 times, and quite likely more than 50 times, and this stretch of road has always been amongst my favourite, and even as a child I desperately wanted to live there. The adults in my life always dismissed it as a silly idea, because there are no jobs in the area, but I never cared--I just wanted to live where I could see such mountains every day. Yes, I had nice mountains to look at from my home in Anchorage, but these are ever so much prettier. That is not surprising, really. Anchorage is located along the southern edge of the Chugach Range. The Chugach Range was built up via thrust faulting from the south. As a result the southern sides of the mountains tend to have gentle slopes, and the north sides of the mountains tend to be steeper and more rugged. (Do a google image search for "Anchorage, Alaska", if you want to compare the two sides of the range, most photos of the city include the mountains in the background...)
However, even though the Anchorage mountains are not as stunningly beautiful as the ones further inland, I have always loved them, and always called the Chugach range "My Mountains". Therefore, it amuses me that I now have "My Mountains" upon my wall, so I can look at them every day, even if I don't live among them.
After some poking around I found a photo which required only a bit of photo shop work to improve the contrast and make the grey overcast day a bit brighter and more cheerful. The result:
When I sent it off to the wall paper printing company they wrote back to ask if it is supposed to be that purple, and I replied that on my screen there was more blue than purple overtones, so she sent me a small print out to see if I was happy with it. Her print, was, in fact, slightly more purple than on my screen, but the morning after it arrived I went for a walk, and the morning light turned the sky here exactly that shade of purple, so I decided we would go with it, and I gave the go ahead to have the wall paper printed. That was March. It has been sitting in a box on the shelf here ever since.
Till this weekend, when we had exactly the right sort of house guests. Our friends K & H were here visiting. We entertained them by playing games, baking cookies, hanging wall paper with them, going for a walk in the forest, and taking a sauna. Wallpaper turns out to be easy to put up when there are four people working on it, two of whom are tall enough to reach the ceiling without standing on anything besides the floor itself. It was a lovely weekend, and I am very, very happy with the result of of the paper hanging. It is so nice to have mountains covering the wall. I am also amused at how the positioning of them turned out. The photo must have been taken from the Glen Highway (Alaska highway #1) somewhere near (give or take a few miles) point B on this map, looking southwards. The wall we put it on is a south facing wall, so, as I lie in bed looking at the mountains, I am looking in the same direction as I would be if I were really there. I did not do this on purpose! But I am delighted that it worked out that way.
Were you to consult a map that shows the names of mountain ranges +/- the geology of the area you would see that the mountains in the photo are the north end of the Chugach Range, and that the Talkeetna Range would have been to the back of the photographer. The highway follows a river valley, which, in turn, follows the path of a major glacier that has long since melted back to its source roots in the mountains, and the glacier, in turn, followed the fault zone between the two mountain ranges, because the rocks of the fault zone were broken up and more easily eroded than those outside of the fault zone.
At the time I choose the photo I did so because it happens to show one of my favourite stretches of the highway between Anchorage and Sourdough, where my Aunt and Uncle and their five boys lived. We visited them at least twice a year (often more) between moving to Alaska in 1975 and the first time I moved away in 1986. Therefore I have driven past this point at least 20 times, and quite likely more than 50 times, and this stretch of road has always been amongst my favourite, and even as a child I desperately wanted to live there. The adults in my life always dismissed it as a silly idea, because there are no jobs in the area, but I never cared--I just wanted to live where I could see such mountains every day. Yes, I had nice mountains to look at from my home in Anchorage, but these are ever so much prettier. That is not surprising, really. Anchorage is located along the southern edge of the Chugach Range. The Chugach Range was built up via thrust faulting from the south. As a result the southern sides of the mountains tend to have gentle slopes, and the north sides of the mountains tend to be steeper and more rugged. (Do a google image search for "Anchorage, Alaska", if you want to compare the two sides of the range, most photos of the city include the mountains in the background...)
However, even though the Anchorage mountains are not as stunningly beautiful as the ones further inland, I have always loved them, and always called the Chugach range "My Mountains". Therefore, it amuses me that I now have "My Mountains" upon my wall, so I can look at them every day, even if I don't live among them.
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Date: 2013-11-25 06:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-11-25 10:17 pm (UTC)For those of you who might wonder my little sister and I named it "chicken leg" because from a certain angle when driving up the road it looks like a cooked chicken drumstick, leaning against the side of the hill, with the wide end up. I think we might have been hungry on the day we noticed it.
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Date: 2013-11-26 03:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-20 04:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2014-02-04 05:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-02-04 08:05 am (UTC)