Schwarzwald
Not all those who wander are lost.
Schwarzwald
Tonight, I wandered into a wilderness of magic — a woodland I had imagined when I read Hansel and Gretel or The Lord of the Rings as a boy. Dark and forbidding. Home of faeries and mischievous woodland creatures… and more than a few wolves. Were and otherwise.
The night is gloriously dark. A misting rain dampens my hair and brows and deepens the colors of my cloak.
It gives me the kind of mysterious awe I have sought every day since childhood. I have always wanted to be lost. Completely and totally. But good spatial awareness and a stubborn sense of direction make that difficult. And with technology, nearly impossible.
Tonight, though, I am wonderfully lost in the Black Forest of southwestern Germany. Known in Deutschland as Schwarzwald.
This place is quiet and slow. It required driving several hours from the austere beauty of the Swiss alps into the rural interior of a country I have only ever been to once. And now I find myself here, with days ahead of me to wander and disappear into trees.
As if summoned by story, a faery has found me. She does not lead me. She does not rescue me. She simply stays — a pale periwinkle light giving the faintest sense of my space.
Up hills. Into valleys. Over rocks and through shallow streams.
I feel like one of those adventurers from the old tales — somewhere there must be a witch with a clever house, or a stalking wolf waiting in the underbrush.
Perhaps great spiders cling silently to the trees above, waiting to descend and bind me in silk.
Imagination grants the thrill without the danger.
It makes me smile to pretend.
The forest is dark and quiet in a way I rarely experience. It is the density of the trees, yes — but also the remoteness. Winter silences everything. I imagine this place under snow, the hush made even deeper, sound swallowed whole.
My steps are light tonight as I round bends and squint into the path ahead, trying to see more than a few feet into the black. It is just me and my wanting in the faint starlight.
I do not know where I am going. In that sense, I am perfectly, magnificently lost.
And awe — true awe — is harder to reach when one knows too much.
I walk in that state now.
Lost. And happy.
I want this venture to open a portal — not just into the woods, but into someone. Into something. A new adventure.
I do not want the night to end.
Understanding why places like this exist in the oldest stories.
Because the forest is where the self thins out.
Where the man who knows directions, who answers messages, who performs competence — falls quiet.
There is no audience here. No one to impress. No one to rescue. No one to seduce.
Just breath.
Footsteps.
Cold air in the lungs.
And somewhere between the bend in the trail and the sound of water moving unseen in the dark, I begin to meet myself without the armor.
The boy who wanted mystery.
The man who still does.
Not heroic. Not tragic. Not longing for a witness.
Just here.
The forest does not care who I am.
And in that indifference, I am free.
Lost — not as failure.
Lost as permission.
Tonight, I did not wander to find a portal to someone new.
I wandered to see who remains when there is no path to follow.
And I found him.
Quiet. Breathing. Smiling in the dark.
What I am really saying, beneath all the romance of mist and wolves, is something simpler. I hope I like the man I meet out here. Not stage-me. Nor the wistful storyteller some years hence. Or the man reflected in another's gaze.
Just plain old ambulatory me.
There's a quiet, constant fear droning under my existence. I hear it when life gets quiet and still. And what is still there is smaller than I expected and it has a loneliness that all of my charm can't wash away.
No mirrors out here, so how can i see me?
In the bark and in the dark is a quicksilver reflection
that evokes no reaction.
No one here to approve of me. Or misundersand me.
These trees don't care who I am, from where i herald.
And in this dark quiet, I walk and wait to see what comes, what rises in me and in this impenetrable world.
Not here to impress or win.
And rising in me and in my world:
Wonder Light steps An erupting smile.
And tonight and all my days, let this, God, be enough!
Let us love this man who is enough, and who is loved.
Let us praise him for coming here, having that courage.
A courage that will carry him in life's darkness and let him stay.
Schwarzwald