Josie's Mug
This past Thursday, in celebration of my Weird Fiction class and Deutschkurs being canceled, I decided to pop over to the Hauptbahnhof in my swankiest adventure gear to see what I could find.
The next train would leave in seven minutes destined for Bruck an der Mur; I randomly selected the name of a town which was on the train-stopping-agenda, and to my increasing happiness, to get to “Peggau” would cost me €1,70.
Hop the train, peel the €0,50 avocado, listen to some “Roo Panes” and thirty-three minutes later find myself stepping out the train door to a beautiful, cozy little tiny town surrounded on all sides by whopping cliffs and forests.
My face curves into a wide smile without my guidence and I give my hammock an excited pat; perfect.
The rain was still coming down in a steady drench, and the bottom layer of whispy grey clouds is whispering between and around the cliffs, hanging in the trees and curling around the mountains, creating the illusion that it was endless.
I decide to turn left as I come out of the little Peggau train station; from that point on, it seems truly as if the Universe took control of the day.
I find myself very shortly in the middle of this reaching pine forest, the soft crunchy earth laden with pine needles and dry from the coverage of the thick trees. I was going to stop here and set up my hammock, but my curiosity gets the better of me when my boots intersected with a faint trail and I decide to follow it out.
It takes me to the base of the cliffs, and breath fails me: cave after cave dots the base, one every 50 meters or so as I continue along the path.
Not the dinky caves that are more just a temporary break in surface area smoothness, but the real exciting caves that, as you peered into it head on, were pitch black with depth and a lack of an end point.
The Universe and the path take me up the mountain, my feet, quite toasty and dry within my boots, sink deep into the wet leaves and scramble along smooth tree roots, the ages of which seem to surpass comprehension.
I hit the lower cloud level and suddenly the world around me becomes wonderfully mysterious. Little whisps of clouds dance around the wet mossy earth that my hands gripped and I have to gingerly step around a multitude of very chill, happy snails and earth worms.
This sense of…pure wild isolation excites me. Every time. This feeling that my presence is not only unique but also welcomed by the trees and forest around me. That the air I am breathing was just produced, and was just produced for my inhalation.
Gratefully, I exhale and hear the trees breathe in as deeply as me.
I scramble my way up for about an hour until I come to another, secondary layering of caves. Massive, rubber-smooth trees–I’m talking the Newfoundlands of the tree species–surround me.
I take my pick of the two knottiest to set up my hammock, kick off my boots and snuggle into the folds of material. I pop the bottle of Austrian Pale ale and giggling, rock back and forth in the hammock over the side of the cliff.
For a while I read Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson but the steady drip of the rain from the leaves of the trees high above alert me to the idea of unsustainable happiness. With only gratitude flowing around my soul, I pull on my boots again and jaunt over to the coziest cave to snuggle in amongst the dry leaves.
I spend about three or four hours oscillating between Nature, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and writing in my Moleskine, the scarf that is tucked around my legs and my chunky knit hat seated safely on my insulating curls keeps me warm in this kind of world.
If one were to peer at the five pages of tiny writing entered into my Moleskine, indubitable confusion would occur. Periodically interrupting concurrent thoughts are single-word exclamations such as: Safe! Independent! Free! Love! timelining the emotions and feelings that kept arising from the Nature that whispered around me.
And indeed. I love this kind of isolation. Here, I am not committed to following social protocol. If I’ve got a song stuck in my head, I belt it. If I want to talk musings to myself, I speak with confidence and purpose. If I need to pee, I just yank down my leggings and go.
The time passes and my joints get a bit stiff. Satisfied with this experience, I jump and dance my way down the way I came, no agenda, no plans, no thoughts, just existing.
The day was far from over, however….
…to be continued…