Day 31. A strange day

I left the mountain of hay, it was early, I wore my odd pare of found gloves, one pink, one black. When I stepped out of the field, onto the muddy path, I saw a snail. A big one. I had only seen one Burgundy Snail, the ones you eat as "escargots", during the last thirty days. Since I did a project in Sweden with 108 snails and spent lots of time with them in a small galery space they have a special meaning to me. Seeing one just having left the mountain made me smile. A good sign.

I walked and suddenly they were everywhere. Big guys. Slow but determinated to move on. They do 3 meters in an hour, they can become 20 years old, they mate by shooting love arrows into their partner. They can dance together for hours. I love watching them.

I decided to continue the beautiful bike trail instead of walking straight to Marburg, I might even skip the city alltogether.

When I walked through a field a kite flew over my head, hunting, praying. He shrieked. I thought about the words a friend had written to me. "May the animals on the road speak to you." Two ducks flew by, making their duck sound, the kite got even closer, then flew off. I heard a cuckoo nearby.

The snails were quietly moving on. I followed their example. It was getting brighter.

I walked 10 kilometer and found a nice small friendly campsite at the edge of a yellow rape seed field, 1,5 kilometer from a village on a hill. The sun was shining. I hesitated. What do you do when you planned to walk 30 kilometer but you find the perfect spot to spend the night too early?

You walk on.

You walk on because the walking tells you what to do and after 10 minutes you return and pitch your tent and lie on your back in the grass, listening to some music, dozing off because the mountain kept you awake most of the night. You talk to the people on the campsite, you walk to the village that looks like there will be a wonderful cafe where you can drink coffee and then visit the restaurant across the village square to eat some honest food and spend the rest of the day and evening writing and reading because your tent is too small.

There was a restaurant but it was closed and by the time I discovered the coffee mill on the edge of the village it had closed too and when I started walking back to the campsite hungry it started to rain and I was getting the feeling the day turned itself against me. Then I found 20 lucky clovers. I put them in my notebook, wondered what on earth that meant, decided on "nothing, just nature" and got home. There was a sudden shower, I dived into my tent, got out again just in time to see a rainbow. Ate my diner, the usual diner, bread, cheese, dried meat, fruit, water. I ate my desert, some dark chocolate, inside again because the rain came back.

It was eight 'o clock. I was lying on my back in my tent. It is too small to sit. Outside two people were measuring the field my tent was in. On. Are you in a field or on a field? At some point I got the feeling they were even measuring my tent but I might have imagined it. I remembered a quote: "Measuring adds weight to the world."

What a strange day.