Sometimes I think about landscape and feel grateful Chez Sven is tucked into a picturesque rolling countryside, rather than being located on a boring plain. Hills and valleys are simply more interesting visually. I lived in Manhattan until age five, then Washington, DC, with four years in Poughkeepsie, NY before Paris, France. What all of these places have in common is relative flatness. Sven's different. He grew up in Eksharad, a small, rural town in the middle of Sweden. Eksharad is situated beside a river, in a beautiful, rolling landscape with many tall evergreens and lakes. Before moving to Paris in 1987, Sven taught for 17 years above the Arctic Circle, in Kiruna, where a friend of his built the Ice Hotel. Kiruna is surrounded by mountains, which are snow-covered many months of the year. This is why Sven immediately identified the lines in the photo above, taken at LeCount Hollow. Do you know what they are?
