Joy in the fog
Outward vision isn’t the only way to see the world.
The town bells rang eight o’clock as I walked up the stairs to the church in the cliff, the first steps on Saint Hildegard’s Way. The air was heavy with the potential of rain, and just cold enough I wanted a coat, but climbing the stairs said otherwise. This created the conditions where my flushed face heated the inside of my glasses and the air cooled the outside, giving me my own person cloud to perpetually wipe off my lenses.
It was a losing proposition. So, I lifted my chin and looked out of the bottom of my glasses, where the steam wasn’t winning. Looking like a grumpy librarian, I saw most of the sticks trying to trip me— and none of the landscape. Grouchy and blind wasn’t how I wanted to start this pilgrimage. I needed to look at what was being offered, not at what I wanted and didn’t have. But sight seemed sort of crucial for success.
Turns out, outward vision isn’t the only way to see the world. The ground has its own microcosm. Germany has orange slugs, fabulous white snails, and lovely mushrooms fanning the ends of the cut trees. Yet, microcosms and all, what was actually being offered came to my ears, not merely my eyes: the birds were singing and my lack of sight helped me listen.
The bell might have sent us on our way, but the birds traveled with us all day, starting right there when I needed to use other senses to remind myself of my “why.” Merlin told me that I heard Eurasian Robins, Eurasian wrens, Eurasian blackbirds, and then the Common Chiffchaff (??!). I don’t hear these sounds at home, but I heard them today, with my glasses forming their own personal sauna and my body sweaty but chilled, and their chorus said, “We got you.”
Smarting off often helps me reorient, and so with chirping filling my world, I used that great spiritual practice to see how the trail filled me with wonder. I wondered why the Germans didn’t believe in switchbacks: it was all up or all down. I wondered where the path was on the detour. I wondered, often, what a sign said when Google translate was off doing his own thing in another part of cyberspace. But then I settled in and also wondered the names of these new trees, and the names of the wildflowers that grew in the forest. I wondered at the large fields of waving grasses and underbrush that was made of last autumn’s leaves while the canopy shone green in the fickle sun. I wondered that every time I stepped back into the trees the birds were there filling the air with music. “We got you.”
This is why I came to the trail. To be reminded of the beauty that is out here. To see both the grand and the granular. To go a little further than I think I can. To be held by this great big world filled with the many tiny connections proving, “We got you.”