Resting afer a strenuous hike. Walchensee, Bavaria. (All photos: A. Furchert)

Grace can be the experience of a second wind,
when even though what you want is clarity and resolution,
what you get is stamina and poignancy
and the strength to hang on.”
— Anne Lamott

Dear fellow pilgrim,

We send you greetings into your summer where ever you may spend it. Last week we were taking a sabbatical from our sabbatical year in Berlin — traveling to Bavaria, doing what we needed most - taking time off and breathing in beauty.

Thus, we revisited places we love dearly. Bavarian monasteries, shimmering lakes, and the “Blue Land” (as the artists around the foothills of the German Alps have named the country which stretches from the Benediktbeuern Monastery in the east to Ettal Abbey in the south.

After taking in the beauty of our surroundings, biking the “blue land” along creeks and rivers or just sitting in awe, we planned for our last day a hike onto a mountain top. Of course, it should be an easy hike, suited for a family with a 4 year old who are all untrained hikers! We decided for a tour the books labeled “light”, easy for kids and dogs, no special skills needed, 5 hours total.

My, were we mislead! Never trust the books, always asks the locals, we later learned (The locals also have a range of opinions - but almost no one thought our hike “light”.)

But we did not hear from the locals until we had already started our hike, late for sure after a good and long breakfast, and all the packing up to do to get a family going.

Hannah asked for her first picnic while we were already breathing hard on the first 50 (vertical) meters. Energetic hikers past us left and right, some encouraging us, some rather suggesting caution. “This will get really steep,” and “no, it is not an easy hike.” were some of the advice. “My four year old runs up and down this trail,” another local countered, smiling.

We sat on a log, feeling somewhere between confused and disheartened. Our first attempt to show our child the mountains had turned difficult already. We should have taken the cable car, I regretted, though we had decided against getting on the mountain THAT easy. But Chuck said “we can do it” (quoting the recent German Chancellor) and we decided to try some more until the terrain got too risky for rookies like us. So we packed up the snack and packed our tired child into the carrier on Chuck’s back.

She promptly fell asleep.

And while our child napped away we lurched our way upwards like old donkeys with too big a load.

Though the path was much steeper than advertised, we were entranced by the cool beauty of the towering trees that surrounded us, clinging to the rocks better than we could.

Still, my husband was delighted. We will make it, let’s just go another hour or so, he whispered, breathing harder under our sleeping child — already too big for a carrier. Perhaps we will find a clear picnic spot with a view and declare it a day, he said.

I plugged along and started pondering, as philosophers always do when you send them on a hike: Why do pilgrimages always turn out differently than expected? And why are hikes in the mountains so strenuous? And why do people want to go there anyway?

I get easily lost when I am walking “a path untrodden” of which “I cannot see the ending” (Though I love the liturgy using these words!). In front of me just a steep narrow path ahead winding its way up through dark forest. It always looks like the top is just over that edge, but every edge revealed still more path beyond us. “There better be a view soon,” I hear myself saying, noticing I was not only carrying our water but also my older ego with me.

After a very long while a knowledgeable and kind hiker helped us out. From the 700 vertical meters for the hike, we had already surmounted 200. He tells us this as though it is good news. Already? It feels like we have been hiking on the spot, I hear my older ego squeeking.

But wait!, the kind local tried to comfort us. Another 200 meters (height not length!) and you will come to a crossroad. There will be a lovely overview there. And some stones to sit.

So we entrusted ourselves to the wise local and to the path ahead. After a second picknick our child, now awake and fresh like a mountain lion, started to pull us along. We built hiking sticks for each of us and started marching.

““Grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on.””

— Anne Lamott

Second Wind

And then something shifted.

Suddenly our feet felt lighter and the path more welcoming. None of this could have been objectively true, as our feet got more tired with every step and the path got more steep with every meter, now appearing like big steps someone has hewn into the mountain stone.

Still, we leaned in. Our “light hike” had become a “strenuous pilgrimage,” and as pilgrimages always are, you never know quite what to expect. We laughed at jokes, and at stumbles. We held our breath to look through the trees into the dark distance. But mostly we walked with lighter hearts.

And so it is with our journey on life’s way, too. All you can do is to walk to your best ability, to check if you are still on the right path, and to decide when it is time to take a turn.

The view! Kochelsee shimmering through the trees.

Halfway in, there was indeed a view! A steep cliff opened up in front of us and I clutched Hannah’s hand tighter. Before us a blue lake shimmered and stretched towards the horizon, on one side, the mountain tops of the Bavarian Alps and on the other the rolling blue-green foothills. And the translucent sky and clouds reflected in it. We held our breath. We decided to declare victory and took in our reward. It was worth the sweat and strain. What ever else comes now is just for the fun of it.

There was a little time left before our turning around time and we decided to try some more upwards. It was not that far anymore to the trail’s crossroads. And then it was a short, intense hike to the top. Still, we decided for the trail to the mountain hut rather than for the mountain top to save an hour of daylight for our hike back.

Walking away from the mountain top, like Moses who would not see the promised land, we now shared the pasture with cows who had made it further up than we did. The mountain hut, famous for offering cold beer to exhausted hikers, was closed and we shared our last crumbs for a last picnic. We sat in the shade of the hut and the trees looking upwards all the way beyond the grazing cows to the cross on the mountain top. Surely you would have had a great panorama on the whole Alps from up there!, my older ego kept nagging.

…at the hut below the mountain top. Can you find a cow? And the cross at the peak?

I looked at our child. She was building stone castles and missing ice cream more than the mountain top. We laughed. And we packed up.

We chose a different way down which was supposed to be the park ranger street. But it turned out to be even more strenuous than the other. Who brought all the loose stones here?, our daughter asked eager to clean up the path. It needed the story of Sisyphus and some more to convince her that we will not be able to clean up the forest road and also arrive at the lake before darkness fell.

The anticipation of ice cream also helps :-) And so our child, who appeared to have grown up on the mountain, decided to take the steep paths jumping like a mountain goat pulling us along.

Down and down it went, the reward of a blueish green shimmering lake deep below us, peeking through vertical columns of the trees.

There was singing and clapping and probably also some yodeling when we finally arrived at its shore, which welcomed us with its otherworldly, quiet beauty and refreshing cold waters.

Arriving at The Walchensee before sunset. Grace incarnate shimmering through the clouds in the water..

Dear fellow pilgrim, which journey are you on these days? And can you see its ending yet?

“Are we there yet?” isn’t only a children’s questions. I so often find myself asking it when a path turns out more winding than expected and more strenuous than hoped for.

We all know these mountain trails. They take our all, but they also quiet our head, until we only do one step at a time. We are practicing emptying, that is what we do, when we arrive with empty hearts and open eyes wherever it leads us.

It might not be always as magnificent as a mountain lake merging into the blue sky. But it surely will be a place at which we arrive with a heart bursting with quiet, and with clearer eyes and deeper senses.

Grace can be like that.

With love, Almut with Chuck and little one

A Blessing by Chuck

May all your difficulties be turning points
Places where the lightness of light breaks through

And when there is no relief,
may you find there a second wind
and the strength and focus to continue
the struggle.

And may you learn to recognize
and to name this turning
with its real name:

Grace.