AUTUMN | WINTER 2020 MONIKA SCHAFFNER CONNECTING SPACES MONIKA SCHAFFNER INTEGRATIVE GEOGRAPHER & FOUNDER, CONNECTING SPACES STORY BY THOMAS BORGHUS PHOTOGRAPHY BY CLAUS VISBY Overlooking Lake Thun in Hilter ngen, Switzerland, Monika Scha ner stands on the balcony of her quaint little hillside apartment. Lost in thought, she takes in the scenic view before her while casually sipping from her teacup. To most people, it's the stu of postcards, but to her it's nothing out of the ordinary. She points towards a mountain peak on the opposite side and says, "That's the Niesen over there in the Bernese Alps." — Not long before Monika was born, her family moved to rural Nepal where her father, a civil engineer specialising in eco-friendly road construction, was tasked with establishing a comprehensive road network. This led to a transitory life on the road for the Scha ner family who would gradually make their way further and further into the pristine wilderness of Nepal — the country that, in every sense of the word, would become Monika Scha ner's home. There, on the precipice of civilisation, where social and cultural expansion was yet to take its toll, mountains would become the permanent backdrop in a childhood otherwise characterised by change; a soothing constant of sorts. In developing the infrastructure of Nepal, Monika's father and mother, a PhD specialising in bioengineering measures in connection with road construction, lived out their shared passion to the fullest. They saw it as their duty to minimise erosion and preserve the untouched nature that they encountered on their way into the wild. This sense of obligation was passed on to Monika, who would eventually take the academic route, just like her parents, and become a PhD herself — but in the eld of Integrative Geography, specialising in Hydrology (the study of water in connection with environmental measurements). Following in her parents' footsteps, working towards environmentally conscious solutions, Monika would go on to land a job in the Swiss Ministry of Environment, linking data with the European Environment Agency to ensure water protection. From the outside, everything seemed to be going according to plan, but on the inside, Monika was starting to realise the plan wasn't for her. Just prior to the Gorkha earthquake of 2015, this gradual realisation prompted Monika to travel to Nepal as she had done so many times before. But this time with the intention of recalibrating her course in life. Monika had done everything that was expected of her, followed every convention and played her life by the book. Notwithstanding, she was unable to identify with the person she had become because the ideals she was living her life by were not conducive to personal ful lment. So she took to the Himalayas for a month-long journey in search of clarity and the courage to take action. Monika found both. A few weeks later, the earthquake shook Nepal while Monika, who had returned to Switzerland, ended the relationship she was in, moved out of the house and quit her job. Born into a life that was transitory in nature, a contained life with hollow values simply did not satisfy her inherent yearning to be just that; transitory in nature. Today, Monika divides her time between Switzerland and Nepal, and with one foot planted in the West and the other in the East, she has taken it upon herself to bridge the gap between the two. That is, between the intellect and the spirit; rationality and mysticism; the seen and the unseen; between that which can be perceived and that which cannot. Monika sees the wisdom of the East as not contradictory to but, rather, entirely compatible with that of the West. In order to fathom phenomena within one realm, one must sometimes resort to the language of the other. Why shy away from either science or mysticism when they are able to inform each other and, ultimately, promote positive global change? This has been Monika’s credo ever since the seismological period of change within herself as well as in her home away from home. >
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