The bridge in the sky connects two towns and crosses a chasm. It was built for people to drive up to the village to spend money and then to cross it and then to cross back or perhaps to embark on a longer journey but either way they end up back at the starting point….

These photographs were taken on Hafelekarspitze (Hafelekar Peak), a mountain in the Austrian Alps right above Innsbruck. The following is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for Past@Present, the UMass Amherst Department of History’s blog, about this trip to the Alps. In November 2019 I went to Innsbruck, Austria, to attend the Annual Conference…

“In years long gone, too many for the almanac to tell of, or for clocks and watches to measure, millions of good fairies came down from the sun and went into the earth. There, they changed themselves into roots and leaves, and became trees. There were many kinds of these, as they covered the earth,…