“If you can’t get up there by yourself you have to find another tree.” Is what I heard from my parents as a kid, when I asked them to lift me up a tree that was too big for me to get on top by myself. “You have to be able to get up there by yourself, otherwise you won’t be able to get down again.” Was the reason for it.
Back then I found that annoying. It seemed so much easier for them to lift me up or down. Also they where taller and could get up where I couldn’t but wanted to. “How unfair and stupid.” I thought back then until I recently started to cycle through cold November-days and understood exactly what this was about.
After endless seeming kilometres through the fog we reach the third bakery and I am completely wrecked. Cycling in November isn’t the same as in summer. My bike weighs heavy on my legs as much as the fog weighs heavy on my mind. The cold tires as much as the endless road. 40Kilometres in November feel like a 100kilometres in June. I didn’t know that.
We sit in the warmth of the bakery, eating, drinking coffee. But all that feels like a bad joke, since I know I’ll have to leave that warmth again too soon. I also know it’s the last moments before we will have to say goodbye. And I know there are only about two hours of daylight left, for me to find a place to sleep. At the same time I am so exhausted I don’t have any capacity to think. Which probably saved me from overthinking and despair.
Suddenly I remember that I had drunken no water all day long, it had been too freezing cold to swallow. I go to the bathroom just to enjoy a moment of hot water running over my hands. When I see my face looking back at me in the mirror I am a bit shocked. I look like I am done, completely, as if I would break out in tears the next second. My hair is a mess, due to all the scarfs hats and helmet I am wearing. My cheeks are bright red. My eyes tiny and tired. I look exactly how I feel. Exhausted.
“Tonight it will be 3°C...” “Why has nobody told me that before?” It smells of snow.
“How am I supposed to get myself out of this?”
The moment of goodbye is short. Luckily. I hate it, I hate to say goodbye to people.
As I ride around the fountain, into a little cobblestone street out of town I suddenly remember the trees I climbed as a kid. “Anything I can get myself into I can get myself out of.” Then why should this day mark an exception?
Around 15km further there is a little village with a promising hiking path along the forest, perfect for me to hide in for the night. Or that was my expectation. When I reach the village and the forest, I have to learn that I am in the middle of a steep hill. All flat surface is exposed farm land. A few houses around, enough to feel seen but no one around to ask for permission to camp on the land.
Eventually a car parks up at one house, someone gets out. I cross them, just as I was about to leave, wanting to find my luck in another forest further away. “If it’s a woman”, I decide “I’ll ask her if I can camp in her garden.”
It is Eva that welcomes me. First into her garden and then into the house. She’ll have to leave anyway she says. Shows me the kitchen, bathroom and my bed and is gone.
I sit in the warm living room. The fire is burning, I eat and dry my clothes. Once more I can’t believe where this day came to end.
In the morning we have breakfast together. Eva and me, we talk and talk and I can only marvel at how beautiful this life is.
“You can get yourself out of anything, you got yourself into.” It’s like climbing trees. And this cold November day indeed, didn’t mark an exception.
Thank you all for passing by, have a lovely day!
All photos and words are owned by ©kesityu taken and written by myself.
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STOPComings and goings - sometimes the nicest meetings are brief and goodbye comes quickly. I think your parents were on to something, cherie. Stay safe <3
Magical.