(via) The week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day is an odd one. Though the days feel like they should be (and once were when we were kids) all about the cycle of play, rest and restorative contemplation, they’re instead increasingly marked by the almost hysterical consumption that has come to define the lead up to Christmas. The returning and exchanging of gifts, the lining up to buy even more things, the excessive food and drink enjoyed with festive “fuck yeahs” — it all feels like it’s gone off the rails a little.
We got to thinking along these lines when we saw the above photograph of “The Larch Barn” on the edge of a forest in the Swiss valley of Bagnes (all shots by Christophe Voisin). It just made us sigh. The old barn was completely overhauled into a primary residence for a couple by local firm Alp’Architecture. While it doesn’t appear to have every amenity we’d prefer in a wintry escape (eg. a fireplace), its modern, cozy bones still struck a wistful chord.
We’re not so old as to be incapable of remembering when this week was all about laying low as a family unit in relative stillness. We know the days aren’t best served in cities of distraction. We remember the snow and the quiet, the reading and the record player, the isolation and the wilderness, the leftovers and the love — we recognise it all in these images, and desire it for ourselves, either hidden away off the Hope-Princeton or Malahat highways or somewhere in the Similkameen Valley.
Ahhhhhhhh………..