Exporting optimism for more than 100 years

At the end of May and June, Bohinj’s nature blooms. For spring in the Julian Alps, this is the last time it enters the Slovenian Alpine scene. And suddenly, this late spring wears an abundance of colours. Suddenly, life bursts out of it. Everything spreads outwards, upwards, downwards, sideways, to all ends and places. It is as if we are passing through the most beautiful period of our lives, a new cycle, a new reincarnation. The optimism of new life is the first miracle of spring.

The colours, which change in minutes from a distance due to light and shadows, and up-close change with every step, make the locals eager to work around the house, in the fields, in the woods. The animals are raising their new offspring. Optimism inspires our personal plans and generously expands our reality in the expectation of achieving all the goals we set ourselves, gathering them like flowers for a bouquet. And we always say: “I have to do this and that …” The optimism of the local people is the second miracle of spring.

Intoxicated by the scent of spring or the beginning of summer, we do not think soberly. We are flooded with adrenaline, triggered by events in nature and the pre-summer tension. Everything is interconnected, everything is buzzing and boiling. We are aware that we are constantly getting a little carried away at this time, wanting to step a little further off the path, to do this and that, our minds bouncing back and forth between what we are and what we are not in this transitional period between spring and summer, we are prisoners of positivism, we are all a little bit philosophers and artists at the same time, no one despises the beauty that surrounds us with the energy of optimism. We often say: “This is so beautiful! We live in the most amazing place.”

This is the time of the International Wild Flower Festival, where visitors come to see the first miracle of spring. They come to the festival of colours in search of beauty, romantic images of the landscape and the holy grail of the traveller – the dream ideal of a holiday and new expectations exceeded. They are grateful that the world of utopian natural idyll still exists. The optimism of visitors is the third miracle of spring.

100 years have passed since the first Nature Conservation Park, the forerunner of today’s Triglav National Park, was established. Dr. Albin Belar’s initiatives to protect the valley of the seven Triglav Lakes go back even further, bringing together the optimism of nature, people and visitors under the common banner of protecting the natural environment, caring for it and encouraging visitation. Belar felt the optimism that gave birth to one of Europe’s oldest nature parks. He knew the extraordinary positivity of nature, which reawakens every year in the splendour created by the boundlessness of the will. He knew the optimism of the local people, who entered this world carefully and gently. He has preserved this optimism for visitors and, through the heritage of the Triglav National Park, he is still passing it on today.

Today, the International Wild Flower Festival (MFAC) promotes the optimism of nature, of locals who never give up and of visitors who recognise this and draw new strength from the festival through a reverence inspired by abundance and a new cycle of life.

Isn’t it amazing how we now take it for granted that Belar’s thinking led to the creation of TNP, to MFAC, and that optimism continues to spread among visitors and into their consciousness? MFAC, which started as a small local festival in Bohinj, is now home in all of the Julian Alps. It spreads the mission of protecting the environment, where wild flowers are commonplace, for the sake of man, who coexists with nature and marches forward optimistically with them.

Optimism has been exported all this time among local people and Alpine communities, visitors and institutions. Thanks to Albin Belar, the 100th anniversary of the Triglav National Park and the 18th anniversary of the International Wild Flower Festival, we know that the same optimism inspires us time and time again, and it is the same optimism that is felt most every spring.