the road was unkind

we went for an 8 mile run on a friday morning. she worked and i brought her coffee.

"we could go for a longer run tomorrow."

"yeah. or we could hike up mount sherman for sunrise."

so she worked all day. and then she debuted an opera. and then she went to a birthday party. and then i picked her up. and then we hiked up mount sherman for sunrise.

the ice burned my legs

i was cold and tired when i arrived back at my hotel from the hike up napf depicted in my last post. i took a hot shower, investigated a few possibilities for the next day, and went to bed.

jeans or shorts? i didn't have the greatest options for hiking in switzerland in may. i chose the shorts.

marbach at noon. i was stiff and tired. there are yellow flowers and pretty architecture.





there was a hill called hengst. i didn't know anything about it. i had been contemplating a hike either of hengst or hohgant. "it looks like a really easy route," we had concluded. i had started late--trains out of marbach left earlier than trains out of kemmeriboden, so hengst won over hohgant. hohgant looked scary, anyways, once i saw it in person.



lush greenery. the sun was out. warm and nice. water trickles over the trail--rocks are smooth and veined.

snowline was about 2000 feet below the summit. that wasn't too big of a problem for the first 500 feet or so. at a moment the depth of the snow increased dramatically while the angle of the slope also increased dramatically. i lost the trail, such as it was. i started just going up.



hengst is hengst. it was the easiest of easy options. three hours later my exposed legs were bright red, burnt by the ice i continually scraped them against (probably aided by sun reflecting off the snow). fresh bursts of snow had scoured an avalanche chute a quarter of a mile from my route the whole way to the summit ridge. small slips had summoned great gasps when i 1000 feet of relentless sliding loomed below me. but i topped out quickly enough. i had shaky legs.







after tagging the summit, i had decided that the route i had ascended would be no good for the descent. i estimated where kemmeriboden would be, and calculated that i would get there with a little bit of time to spare before the last bus out. i descended the back side of the mountain. looking back to where i had come from, i saw only white.



the snow gradually dissipated. a trail--a good sign. and then a rough road, then smooth, then paved. a village. i had missed kemmeriboden badly. half an hour later i was climbing onto the last bus out of kemmeriboden. the villagers in the intervening three miles had look at me bemusedly as i jogged by stiffly, backpack in tow. my shower was slightly longer that night.

coffee with one's elders

the last few drops of my coffee were cold. i held them in my mouth for an extra moment. 'coffee' was a generous word. but the schnapps still felt warm as it worked its way to my stomach. i readjusted the contents of my backpack. a hand claimed the glass mug that i had been drinking from.

i looked up again. the mug had returned, restored to its former full, warm glory. "ah, sorry, i am just leaving."

"no, stay. he is buying." the thumb protruded from a purple nylon jacket. dirty beige coveralls feigned indifference.

i stayed. something about the windbreaker and the coveralls felt disconcertingly familiar. i made fast work of my second round of coffee and schnapps.

i still had 10 or 11 miles of hiking ahead of me, but they would mostly be downhill. in any case, it was getting late. i dropped a large coin on the rough-hewn table and shivered at the prospect of stepping back into the indecisive precipitation. it looked like it was going to be rain right now. ten minutes before it had been snow.

an hour earlier, four days of stubble had called at me from behind a glass bottle and a carafe at the table where i now stood. "i have coffee and schnapps. come drink some."

i was a little bit concerned about the time, and wanted to make it the last half-mile to the top of napf, the highest hill in the area. "will you still be here in half an hour?"

"it depends on the animals. if there is a problem, i will have to go be with them."

i had taken my chances, and had returned in the promised 30 minutes to purchase my reward.

i had already hiked 11 miles that day from the town of trub to the top of napf. the temperature wavered between the low and mid 30s all day long. i had about two hours of good daylight left when i left the schnappshop, but i would probably have some visibility for at least the first 30 minutes of twilight. that wasn't a whole lot of time to go 10 miles in, but i figured i would jog when convenient.

ridgelines emerged from fog. occasional beams of light illuminated the trail. i jogged most of the way.

i was on the main road an hour and a half later. as i walked the last two miles to my ancestral home, i recognized the men who had sold me schnapps. they were my grandfather--it must have been the 1960s.

i must and shall return/dom

i really like cologne, germany.
i was there for a conference. my hotel was a mile or so from the university. i didn't really have a paper written, but i was going to give a paper.
turkish folks sold me food, and i felt like they were my friends.
i got a disconcertingly good deal on no notice at a very nice hotel. i was able to sleep there. i stayed warm.
it was late may. it snowed a little bit.
i walked toward the main road. "hey mzungu!"
sometimes when i travel i just feel like i'm in not-home. that makes it hard to tell where i actually am. but 'mzungu' is not what americans are normally called in germany.
i turned around. terrill and robert. "Oh, hey guys! terrill--i have your barbies and velveeta cheese in my room." (that was the truth).
we went to the cathedral. it's over 500 feet tall. it has the largest facade of any cathedral in the world. the second tallest spires.
when i had arrived in cologne the previous day, i climbed stairs up out of the train station. the dom suddenly became the earth to the meteor of my consciousness. it was irresistibly beautiful and ornate, but too much. too much size, too much detail. my mind sizzled into nothing.
we heard prayers. we climbed to the top of one of the spires.

























we parted ways. terrill and robert went to the netherlands, and then back to their home in uganda. (robert has since moved on to south sudan. i'll be in their neck of the woods this spring--but more in uganda than in south sudan.) i went to switzerland, and then back to the united states.
i had a a few hours to spare my last day in europe. i spent them on trains between switzerland and cologne and back, with a cold overnight in basel. i spent about 18 hours on trains. i had about four hours cologne.
i walked across town, ate at my turkish restaurant, and left.

the book got wet

i went to switzerland in may. and i spent a little bit of time in germany.

i couldn't afford bern.







after a few days i felt settled enough to go for a walk. so i picked a section of the grenzpfad napfbergland, so kindly referred to me, and carried a little piece of plastic, a book, a snack and some water for a while. there were fields and surprise restaurants.













i still didn't quite have my bearings, though, and felt occasionally confused.



coming to a picturesque barn, i drafted a comedy of errors.







it doesn't do much for one's street cred to say 'i lost my way on a poorly marked trail featuring hotels and restaurants every few miles in one of the most developed countries in the world because i wasn't paying attention to where i was going but i saw a nice cow and i went to the same wrong village twice and the schoolgirls asked me if the bus had passed and i sat on somebody's porch at five in the morning in order to guess the best way back to bern where i didn't want to go so i could get to trub where i did want to go', but let's be honest, that's pretty much what happened. after i regained the 600 or 700 (or so? who even remembers these things?) of feet i had lost on a poor routefinding decision, i crawled under my little piece of plastic in the 40 degree rain and let my glasses get foggy for a few hours in anticipation of another day of poor routefinding. i woke up in fog-shrouded forest. the book got wet.