About the 'Wolf'...
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How on Earth did I get here? Didn’t I want to cross the skies as pilot?…
Sure,
I wanted to dance in the skies
see clouds from above
fly a big machine, one with 4 powerful engines
I wanted to master dangers,
land safely in dense fog
and dodge evil thunderstorms…
Fantasies of all that made me overcome my Ur-Angst of invisible, unknown sources of threatening noise. Rather than run for cover when a deep grumble filled the air I ran to a clearing to see better what went on in the sky.
From one day to the next I got infected by a bug: the aviation-“bug”
I was four years old then, they tell me.
It was a stubborn bug, impossible to get rid of.
Every day I found new ways to engage with everything that flew and every way of flying.
Of course, I wanted to become a pilot!
In the end I “landed” in physics – by whim of fate. Isn’t that what one calls it when the path of life suddenly takes a sharp turn?
As I was racing full speed towards that gate “pilot” it slammed shut in the very last moment. Wild manoeuvering kept me from crashing into it and threw me on an entirely different road. Rather than stopping and checking the map for the best way out I kept driving on, impelled by a sort of spontaneous curiosity.
It was this curiosity which lured me into research, into the exotic world of elementary particles.
To extract big secrets from tiny particles, to find the one among billions which is different – and to understand why it is different….
That could really be interesting and engaging, so I told myself.
The aviation-bug, of course, had gone dormant for only so long. Instead of driving Boeings around the world on schedule, I now flew gliders wherever and whenever I wanted. This way I got to know the sky in a different, much more intimate way. Thunderstorms suddenly didn’t appear so evil after all…
Between clouds I found sights and insights which I wanted to capture. And so, every once in a while, I got out pen and notepad after landing and jotted down what impressed, inspired me. Images for illustration I had plenty, my camera was a steady companion.
The Nikon was a source of inspiration on terra firma, too. Photography had always been a counterpoint to my activities in lab and cockpit, sometimes also an important supplement.
At some point my curiosity for the ‘elementary’ began to vanish, the unrelenting passion for it had, unfortunately (?), never fully developed. When the opportunity presented itself to manage a year or two without regular income I downed three shots of Tequila and signed my resignation.
Wow! Cool! On my own!
At first the radical change didn’t cause any regrets, nor problems. But then, suddenly and entirely unexpectedly, health problems threw a monkey wrench (or two) into my plans and kept me ‘out of business’ for almost two years.
Thereafter nothing was the same, life appeared hazy, blurry, full of stress.
“Go South! You have to relax, let go! You have to go South!” advised my doc. In Switzerland “South” means south of the Alps, of course, the Kanton Ticino with its Italian flair.
Well, now I’m in Patagonia – a little bit farther south than she had anticipated.
The Nikon came along, pen and notepad, too.
It is a time, a place, to give my creative interests higher priority: photography and writing. At times I work with words and images separately, but often they come together, in websites for example, like here in “WolfsView”, in articles, or an emotional travel report condensed into a couple of pdf-pages.
And whenever I have a chance I climb into a cockpit and fly.
Since my “old world” is too far away from Patagonia to organize a spontaneous get together over a weekend, to exchange news, show my latest photography, read my latest story, I meet my friends here now.
And it is here, where suddenly new friends show up, from all parts of the world, from all walks of life: Welcome, Bienvenidos, Bienvenue, Willkommen!
To you all: browse, look, read – and let me know what you like, what you miss, and also what it is that I should change…
Have fun and hasta luego,
Wolf D. Herold