I got lost. No surprise. It always happens at some point. I've been out of time too long. But I like getting lost.
I asked an old friend, somebody I met on my walk last year, to walk with me on July 2d, to walk together with me on my last Danube day. I would leave the river after Ybbs. He loves rivers. I always think of him when I cross a river somewhere. We never met in real though. And we wouldn't on this day. He would walk in Denmark, we would both start at eleven. He would walk the path he had walked every day for years, the road from his house to his work, through the woods. The road he had walked for the last time as a pathologist last Monday. His last day at work ever.
It was a sunny day. I entered unknown territory, I walked along the Danube bank I had seen from my balcony in the villa where I had stayed for four days and then I walked around the corner. New land. A new river but the same old Danube. Pirate flags and the Devil's Bed in stone. Raspberries everywhere. My feet moved easily.
I walked until Ybbs and there I had to say goodbye but I didn't. I walked on. The river on my left side still. The evening was falling and I walked until it was dark. I heard the beavers jump into in the water as I was walking by. I saw them floating in the water, dark shapes in a dark surface.
I didn't find a good place for my tent but it was warm and I found a nice tree with overhanging branches under which I could roll out my sleeping bag. Next morning it would be covered in slugs but I didn't think about it then. And next afternoon I discovered it hadn't been July 2d after all but July 3d and I had promised another man I would walk with him on that day.
Small chaos. But I will order it with words. Here I can go back in time.
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