White spots

I am convinced white spots are mankind’s destiny. We look on our maps and search for white areas. There where no names of hills, no roads, and missing signs for villages indicate vague, unknown land we expect adventure and discovery. We dream of fortunes, of gold and wisdom, and of untold stories enlightening mankind. We visit these places wherever they are, we endure dangerous voyages to the unknown and finally paint colours and shades on our map, filling out another white spot. Usually, we spend a fortune doing so and unfortunately we do not seem to learn too much.

These and similar thoughts accompanied me while hiking on Friday in a cartographically exhaustively explored area of this world. Close to Lake Konstanz, with regular signs placed on the banks of river Rhine, warning us of touching birds (alive or dead) because of H5N1. Crossing a battlefield of 1799?, the French versus the Russians, one of many Napoleon battle fields. Not, that you would realize it. It is just a nice, somewhat swampy place, but there are books, for sure, with maps showing where the Russians stood and how the French positioned their canons.

Yet, no map indicates (up to now and to my knowledge) that you’ll find Viola odorata there….. hmmm…. What a perfume! Mix it with the fragrance of wet soil, after exhaustive rain over night at low temperatures of a delayed spring, leading ultimately to my soar throat, with the crispy freshness of grass trampled by your knees while you’re trying desperately to archive this particular flower on your camera’s 1GB micro drive and you have yet another white spot… in perfumery. To create this perfume would be a spot worth filling, I won’t do it, however, I have saved its digital image on my hard disk and the fragrance in my nervous system. Bottom line: Our frantic search for white spots is perfectly ok