Walking in the Clouds

Your prayers and good wishes worked, because today was much bet­ter than yes­ter­day. It prob­a­bly didn’t hurt that we got 8½ hours of sleep, too, in the serene quiet of the clois­ter. Even the pas­sion­ately moo­ing cows qui­eted down overnight.

It’s a good thing we were enjoy­ing bet­ter spir­its, because it was a long day’s walk—35 km all told. For the first half of the day we were in the clouds… lit­er­ally. We weren’t that high but the clouds were low. It wasn’t exactly rain­ing; it’s more like we kept walk­ing into the rain droplets that were sus­pended in space in front of us. How­ever, that was just fine, and it didn’t get us very damp or cold at all. We’ve dis­cov­ered that the chief draw­back about rain, sur­pris­ingly, is that we can’t use our Pac­er­poles. (In case you’ve noticed that they’re a spon­sor of ours, let us say here that they didn’t come after us, but we went after them and actu­ally begged them to spon­sor us, because we love their poles so much. If you are a seri­ous walker, def­i­nitely check them out.) They take a huge bur­den off the feet so you get much less tired. They also are great for bal­anc­ing on slip­pery hill­sides… which we needed to do when the nav­i­ga­tor half of us missed a turn and we had to take a “short­cut” through the woods. (Pre­sum­ably, one of these days we will absorb the les­son that a short­cut is never that.) At one point we really had to shoot right down a steep, slip­pery, and over­grown hill­side. Thanks to the won­der­ful bal­anc­ing exten­sion of the poles, I only fell once, and trust me that is a remark­able sta­tis­tic. OK, it really was a bit excit­ing, but the sort of excit­ing you wish you had planned for instead of hav­ing it forced upon you.

Other high­lights of the day included meet­ing com­i­cally friendly goats that maa-ed at us more loudly than you’d think pos­si­ble; get­ting our sec­ond pil­grim stamp at the church in Auern­heim; the dis­cov­ery of a “for­est xylo­phone” all made of wood by a 4th grade class some years back; zigzag­ging back and forth across the bor­der between Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg; and pick­ing up din­ner gro­ceries at a Turk­ish shop in the small indus­trial town of Gien­gen. The home stretch of 12 km were a bit rough, what with the rain and being tired, so we sang pretty much the whole way to dis­tract our­selves from feet and shoul­ders. Every­thing from “Holy, Holy, Holy” and a med­ley of Christ­mas hymns and (of course) “A Mighty Fortress” to “Bohemian Rhap­sody” and “Maxwell’s Sil­ver Ham­mer” to “There Was an Old Lady Who Swal­lowed a Fly” and “She’ll Be Com­ing Round the Moun­tain.” You can sing a lot of songs in 3 hours.

Upon arrival in Stet­ten ob Lon­tal, I directed us to the Landgasthof Adler to retire for the evening. No one was there, the doors were locked, and the phone num­ber only reached an answer­ing machine. Noth­ing puts a wet, dirty, and tired Amer­i­can into an apoplec­tic fit like the fail­ure of an out­fit to observe proper busi­ness prac­tices, which means doing ever­thing to the customer’s con­ve­nience. After work­ing myself into a right­eous froth I agreed we should try the other hotel in town, Zum Mohren, which answered imme­di­ately when I called and assured us that they did indeed have a dou­ble room avail­able. We trudged the last 200 m up there, were greeted by a very friendly recep­tion­ist, and gladly put down our bags at last in our lovely room.

About four min­utes later, the recep­tion­ist knocked on the door. She apol­o­gized pro­fusely but it seemed to her that we already had a reser­va­tion for the evening, made sev­eral days ago. Could that be right?

Ah. It was. I had the wrong hotel in the first place. Whoops.

Jen Rome says:
September 9, 2010 at 4:44 am
Life is ordi­nary here in MN with Rally Sun­day approach­ing, 2 out of the 4 of us under the weather, and new Day­care and Kinder­garten nearly upon us. I think of you often, and Zeke too–and I won­der, does pil­grim­age feel ordi­nary to you? Sur­real? Out-of-the ordi­nary? Like liturgy? Like lec­tio? Like life? Love you! Jen
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paul sailhamer says:
September 9, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Great story re the hotel, tired expec­ta­tions and the sur­prise ending…GK Chester­ton said that “it is not the things that peo­ple want to remem­ber about a jour­ney that inter­est him, but the things they’ll never for­get!” That’s one of those moments you’ll never forget…thanks for sharing!
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Phil and Marianne says:
September 9, 2010 at 4:50 pm
We can upload more songs to your face­book site if you have run out …
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