An Ode to Two of my Favorite and Simple Things in the World

Every year since 2015, as October came around I’ve done the same thing: I went online, found a poster calendar for the new year and ordered one of my favorite books at the same time. Over the years I’ve ordered this calendar from my friend’s bookstore directly, until shipping became prohibitively expensive. Then I ordered via Amazon.de (The German version) – and yes, I hated myself a bit for it, but for this type of stuff this global “Buy’N’Large” store is still really good. Some years this shipping took weeks. There was at least one year where I didn’t receive my calendar until late January. This year, for the first time I was worried. I was worried that the tariffs would fuck up this annual tradition of mine and put an end to the happy ritual of looking at these beautiful places in far away lands. It didn’t. Amazon shipped amazingly fast and no tariffs were added – shipping was bit more expensive than usual – but it’s worth it, for me.

That calendar has been hanging now for years in the dining area of our kitchen – even through a couple of house moves – and it has always been the same: “Hütten unserer Alpen” (Huts of our Alps) – a calendar the DAV – the Deutsche Alpenverein (German Alpine Club) sells with photos and descriptions of various huts in the Alps. I could get a different calendar each year, but I don’t. If I couldn’t get this calendar anymore I don’t believe I would just replace it with another random one – I’d be stumped. Over the last 11 years – and now 2026 is the twelfth – I’ve had this calendar up for the entire year, and as the new year comes around I cut out the photos and keep the beautiful images of these huts on top of mountains during the various seasons of winter, spring, summer and fall. The book I ordered at the same time is called Berg and is the annual magazine of the DAV. It’s a hard cover book collecting the best stories of the year. It’s meant to be a connection point for the members of DAV – one of the largest nonprofit organizations in the world. The DAV owns and maintains over 300 of these huts, many of them for over 100 years. With members from all over Germany, and Austria and South Tyrol folks are putting in countless volunteer hours to keep these huts working and a warm welcoming place in remote places on top of mountains and along rugged trails. There’s another, longer story worth sharing about the background of these huts, how they came to be, and how they shape the landscape of the Alps, but this is for a different post. What I want to talk about is this simple action of always having the same calendar in my house, year after year. (Well of course not exactly the same, the calendar has new photos in it each year, but the size, the idea, the subject matter stays the same.) In today’s world filled with impermanence, with momentary flukes, with too many transient things, this calendar brings me joy everyday. Constantly we are encouraged to chase the new thing, the latest trend, experience something fresh. Sometimes encouraged and often forced as the thing we love and identify disappears, gets bought, closes up shop or changes course.

Maybe, ordering the same calendar year after year is just a sign of me getting older and slower. Maybe I am just yearning for permanence and simplicity; for beauty, that’s unique and can’t be growth-hacked to death?

This Ain’t a Gift Guide

This is the calendar (DAV Shop) and this is the book (DAV Shop). And I wouldn’t want to live without it. I hope you too find these simple treasures in your life that bring you this joy and help you ground yourself in some permanence amidst all the insanity we’re experiencing each and every day. And I hope that more people create art and media that isn’t just primed to bring the next 15 minutes of fame, but is meant to endure. A thing that can create tradition, and permanence, and something that one can rely on and trust to be there for them each and every day.