Chores, The Shakers, & Jane Kenyon

The Clothes Pin

How much better it is
to carry wood to the fire
than to moan about your life.
How much better
to throw the garbage
onto the compost, or to pin the clean
sheet on the line
with a gray-brown wooden clothes pin!


--Jane Kenyon, from Room to Room, 1978

The Shakers were a seemingly eccentric bunch. They never had sex. Never. Yet their little social experiment lasted, is still lasting so far as I know, since the mid 1700’s. Never being able to produce much progeny the sect slowly dwindled, but managed to grow quite impressively based entirely on converts about a century after its founding. They were certainly a religious group, or sect, or movement, and had some wobbly theological ideas, but they were enviable in their devotion to the living out of their creed. And to focus on their celibacy, the most shocking of their tenants to modern ears, is to miss the point.

The Shakers were possibly the only collectivist movement that has ever been able to claim itself a success. They lived in small towns they called Societies, and lived entirely communally. These Societies were carefully ordered and regulated, run by trusted elder members, and highly productive more or less self-sufficient towns. They were conscientiously fair minded to both genders, punctiliously tidy, and loathed ornament or any expression of inauthenticity. As a result, their products are simple, beautiful, and highly prized today.

This careful work stemmed from two dearly held maxims of their founder, Mother Ann: "Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live and as if you were to die tomorrow," and "put your hands to work, and your heart to God." The task at hand, whatever it may be, deserved the Shakers entire attention. All work was being done for the glory of God, so all work must ever strive to be perfect.

Perhaps this was the holding principle of the Shakers, the lynch pin that let them live their collective lives successfully. Wholly devoted to their work, they found themselves made whole in their work. With every menial task elevated to the status of the sacred, the drudgery of chores became the freedom of the gospel. Love, indeed, was in every kneaded loaf, every lathed pole, every packet of seeds. The Shakers cared. And they did not care in the sorry sense of a politician who cares about wolves, or jobs, or health care. They cared for their lives as a good gardener cares for her beds. They cared with the moments we usually consider only the margins, the things we have to do while waiting for our real lives to come around on vacations, or parties, or any time other than here, and now.

Mrs. Kenyon shares this sympathy, it seems. Who can question that it is indeed better to do what life requires than to gripe? And not only that but to undertake it simply, straightforwardly, carefully. Not to throw away the used up, but to recognize its worth and place in the world, as compost. Not to whine of cold, but to bring wood for the hearth, cheerily warming yourself and your companions. To make use of the straight forwardness, even the beauty, of line dried wash, held up by a Shaker invention, the clothespin.

Even in this lauding of work, there is no call to labor more than necessary; the Shakers were inventors as well. The clothespin, washing machine, the flat broom, the circular saw all sprung from efficiency tuned Shaker minds. But they are simple inventions, not roaring, violent spewers of sparks. Just as these doers of chores transformed daily tasks into hymns not with bombast or a 60 hour work week, but with humble joy and moderation. Our vocations, of which certainly the chores of life are a part, can be our lives, and not what stands between us and our lives.

So at least we can learn this from these two American voices: to be attentive, plain and strong. And to see in even our humble tasks the shimmer of the everlasting. Do what you love, and if you cannot, then love what you do. For in then end, it is the same thing.

Thoughts in Autumn

It is fall. The summer is over, washed away under crisp breezes, brilliant leaves in angled sun, and the early nightfalls after daylight savings time.

Cowboys are rounding up their cattle. Students are back in school. The peaks are gathering snow.

And I sit. I only burn one lamp, next to my bed. Friends and family are spread out over continents, from Asia to America. I sit and think, and think my thoughts are only that.

I think about all sorts of things. Benjamin Franklin crosses my mind. He seems never to have been idle. Like Jefferson. Men of action, but also intelligence. Certainly not passive. I critique myself, as I so often do. I am passive. I read, I listen to the radio and recorded music. I falter when I have to produce a finished product. I hesitate when the proper guiding word is required. I procrastinate and put off even the calling of friends, the writing of letters, the making of gifts.

We are all wont to sluggishness, to the easy way. In fact, our society is in large part built on the idea that the easy way is the best way. Google makes a search for information instantaneous, running shoes remove what discomfort they can from the uncomfortable act of running, and cars cocoon us from weather and distance and each other. I have to ask, as I do of myself, if this ease is the proper way? What does the gospel say about the easy way? About iPods? About the wisdom of man?

Grace. All I ask for is grace, that I can forgive myself, forgive others, for what I cannot understand. And then still get up, go, tell, and create.

Because it is fall. And the leaves are turning, and the cold is coming, and after all, we don't have much time.

Hauling Beef

“Maybe up ahead farther?” I squint through the lifting rain. On both sides are corral fences and enormous mangers full mostly of the perpetually confused expressions of cattle. The dirt road we are following is getting muddier. To the right is a trailer, ahead is just more feedlots and ruts, and to the left the gates are closed, even though there seem to be some buildings.

“Well, that trailer? The sign just pointed down this road.” John tries to sound hopeful. “Well, we may as well check it out. At least there aren’t any fences to back over.” We had already accomplished that on this outing. Frankly, our instructions got bit vague in the last few miles of the 120 that had been sketched out on the back of a receipt. Not that they sounded vague when we received them. But these things just tend to be more complicated than explained.

We turn left toward the trailer. We slowly ease our way through the gravelly mud. A puddle looms ahead. The trailer is very dark. The trailers windows are boarded. “Uh…just don’t slow down too much,” John says. Good advice. “We have a turn around though, so we’ll just come back,” I reassure Kelly. She is getting a bit nervous, but she is still indomitable. She seems to be up for anything, from branding or vaccinating the day before, right up to cliff jumping…although the latter takes some coaxing.

I slowly ease the big diesel truck toward the turnaround. I ease the truck up toward the turnaround, as it turns out. We start to slow. “four low!” says John, urgently. I haul on the lever, shove the truck into four low. We sit. The wheels spin. I let off the gas. The truck, and more importantly, the ten thousand pound trailer of beef on the hoof, settle back into the muck. We are stuck.

John steps out, comes around to my side. “Maybe backing?” We try it. The tires grip, we get purchase, and I breathe as sigh of release. Too soon. I can’t turn, and being halfway up the slope, I am heading the trailer into the field. The steers are bellowing. John is shaking his head. Kelly is looking from me to John. I have to keep my cool. I can’t get too discouraged. I fail. “Shit.”

We take off walking, leaving the unbudgable truck to hoof it over to that distant collection of buildings across the feedlot. The rain has stopped, but a cold wind is whipping the straggler drops into our faces. We trudge, and grumble.

Finally, we approach a semi and a trailer like ours pulled up to a series of pens. “Howdy!” calls one of them. He is a small man, with dark glasses and a ponytail poking out from under his straw cowboy hat. His posture can only be described as bowed, just like his legs. He has a big grin. I think he must know what is coming.

“We got our truck stuck.” John and I say it simultaneously. Then we begin to stumble over each other in an effort to explain, excuse, and plead for help. “We thought it was” “We didn’t know” “over there, the trailer” “the mud didn’t look bad” “Can you help us pull the truck out?” “The truck unstuck?”

The man smiles. “Is that Jamie Freeman’s truck? I thought I recognized it.” We swallow…this could be helpful, but now the story will be out for sure. We explain what we are doing, and that we are working for Jamie. “I’m Ken,” the little man laughs, “Let’s go see what we can do about your truck.
He unhitches his trailer, and we head over, bouncing and jolting over the ruts. I am worried as we close in that Ken won’t be able to stop. He slams on his brakes, and we almost slide into our trailer. Almost, but not quite.

John hooks up the tow strap. I clamber up behind the wheel. Ken steps on the gas. Immediately, he spins out. Then he starts to creep forward, hitting the end of his tether he begins to swing and sway, pulling at the tow rope like a mad bulldog with a passion for geometric arcs. I give a little gas. The truck, and trailer, shift a bit downhill. I let up. “Keep going!” John yells from outside. I shrug, and as the Canadians say, give ‘er. We aren’t moving forward, and Ken is skittering over the canola field like a drop of warter on a skillet, but slowly, ever so slowly, the truck comes around. I crank the wheel like a mad man, and ken doesn’t let up until finally, we are going in a straight line, past the puddle, and back to graveled road.

Back at the loading shoot Ken smiles again, sort of secretly. “Say hello to Jamie, will you?” Then he drives off. We off load our eight steers, hand the manifest to a parts worker (the only feedlot employ we can find) and head off to warm up with coffee. All in a day’s work, I guess.

Cattle Drive

At six thirty A.M. the sun has already been up for over an hour. It hangs over the fresh prairie, two fists up and climbing. I step onto the lawn, striding my morning commute from bunkhouse to breakfast. The light is only just warm, the west breeze off the mountains is cool, and I can almost smell the sharp lodgepole bite mingling with the sweet smell of the wild pink roses. Every color is more brilliant so hard on the heels of dawn.
When I enter the kitchen, everyone else is already up. Cass is eating a bagel, Kyra is frying eggs, Jamie gulping his coffee, and Emma is packing our lunches. I pour myself a cup of the good coffee made in a cheap pot, and begin to catch up with breakfast. Everyone seems to be in good spirits, chatting about the plan for the day. First we are going to catch up the horses, saddle up and load them into the trailer. I am going to be driving the quad from here to the field we call Goodfellows’ where the cows have been for the past three weeks. Taking them up there was my second cattle drive. Driving them from there to The Forestry will be my fifth. I am feeling more confident about this one.
After a bagel, a banana, and my quick cup of coffee I head out with the girls to go catch up the horses. Earl, the tall brown cow horse with a white star on his forehead, comes right up to us. I slip the leadrope around his neck, slide on the halter, and start leading him back to the corral. Emma is busy catching her white and brown paint named Pepsi, Ky is haltering old Eddie, and we hope that Brandy will simply follow the other horses. She doesn’t like to be caught, nor tied. Once saddled and bridled she is a trusty horse though, and I will be riding her.
Enticed by both the bucket of oats and her friends, she does follow us into the corral. Tying Earl with the quick release slip knots of hitching posts everywhere, I slowly approach Brandy with her halter. “Hey there Brandy,” I say softly, only barely self conscious of talking to an animal, and learning to enjoy it more every time. “Hey now, easy there. You ready for a good ride today? Good girl, there you go.” Sweet nothings that soothe us both. The first time I tried to brush and saddle her she shied pretty bad, a bad habit of hers. That time, her shying spooked Earl, who pulled as well, tearing a plank from the corral, bruising my elbow. The New Zealanders had joked about how I had gotten over the corral fence so fast. “I didn’t think it was a jumpable fence!” Today Brandy is calmer, likely because I am. She stands politely as I brush her and pat her, talking softly. She even stands patiently as I lay the saddle blanket just behind her withers, set the heavy saddle down, and heave the cinch tight.
Everyone’s saddled, so I rush up to the house to put on my boots, and tie on a neckerchief against the sun. I still am not wearing spurs, but I am starting to think they might be useful. It would be nice to be able to get a little more umph from Brandy sometimes. Ky and Emma leave in Ky’s car. She might have to rush home, since she works the late shift at a restaurant in Waterton park this afternoon. I hope astride the ATV (the Canadians call it a quad) to ferry it out to the field for Cass to ride. Jamie and Cass are already on their way out with the trailer.
After the seven miles on the straight gravel road, the only curves vertical until we hit the foothills, we get to the tall Texas gate marking Goodfellows. I get there just in time to unload Brandy. I hop into the trailer following Jamie’s no nonsense encouragement. The horses are all in there, and I feel a bit claustrophobic with so much muscle inside a little metal box with me. Grabbing Brandy’s lead rope, though, I just walk her out, and everybody stays calm. I lift her bridle from my saddle horn, and she takes the bit without too much trouble. Finally, I stick the toe of my battered boot into the stirrup and swing up. Brandy wants to go right away, but I hold her back, doing my best to sit deep as I softly say “whoa” and gently pull the reins. She stands, but wants to eat the grass. I hold her head up remembering it is impolite for the horses to eat without permission.
When everyone is saddled, we head into the field. Ky and I are assigned to go through some thick brush and aspens and over a small creek to see if there are any stragglers in another open pasture. However, we are on the two less compliant horses, and hers, Eddie, is no fan of water. We can’t cross the creek, both horses simply shying and backing as we kick away at them. Finally Ky dismounts to check on foot. Luckily there are no cows over there.
Meanwhile, Emma and Jamie have been gathering the herd and pushing them toward the gate. Ky and I head over to help, and head off a few “free spirits” as Ky dubs them. Then a calf stupidly darts past the gate when his mother goes through it, cutting him off from the herd. Jamie charges around back, circles into the trees, and Ky and I take up positions to angle the calf through the gate. “Here he comes!” Jamie hollers. Sure enough there is the little calf, at the edge of the trees. He sees us, and isn’t quite sure if he can make it though. I turn Brandy just to point her head away, and with a growling “Get on up there!” from Jamie, the little fella scamper though the gate. “Daniel! Go up the road and hold the herd while we count!” Jamie barks. I haul Brandy’s head around and squeeze my legs. She half jumps into a trot and the cows part before me, eyeing me and bawling before moving to the side. A piece up the rode, we turn to face the others. There is plenty of grass on the roadside, and most the cows, and even the two bulls, are placidly chewing away. Only those on the edge eye me warily.
Once a good count of 33 pairs and the 2 bulls is backed up several times, Jamie calls me back again, and the drive is on. Everyone gets behind the group, calling and constantly moving back and forth to keep the various animals moving in the right direction. “Get along now!” “Come on guys” “Hey Hey Hey” “Heeeya” “Move it up there!” Soon enough, the cows are moving, not fast, but at a steady. We keep the horses right on them, and every once in a while have to move quick to keep one from diving off into the brush.
We head first out onto what is known as the Landing. We have to be careful, because Mac has a bunch of heifers in here, and they will be trying to use their wiles if they know about the bulls. Jamie takes the lead position, up front. Ky is in the back, Emma to the right, and I am on the left. “You know, you have to be more useful than me, because you are on the more useful horse,” Ky jokes to me. She is riding old Eduardo, who is over twenty, and has a special old man saddle blanket because he is so swaybacked. “Well, so long as I am not screwing things up, I’m being helpful right?”
A bit further on, we notice one of the bulls is limping. It’s the Black Angus, with a neck like a linebacker but ten times the size. I remember having to pull the lever on the headlock when Emma and I were testing the bulls. He seems much less threatening from horseback. Then we notice a pair heading for the bush. “Hey…giddup Brandy!” I kick my heels and turn her into the woods. I have to hold a hand up to keep branches out of my face, and my knees knock tree trunks on either side. But we head off the cows, and emerge again back on the road with the girls and the rest of the herd.
As we ride along the family talks about past rides, and summer plans, and the past year. I mostly focus on doing my job right, since I still have to focus on riding, although having the cows to worry about does help the riding run a bit smoother. Suddenly up front we hear Jamie yelling at cows. “You better get up there,” Emma says to me. I give a sharp dig to Brandy and she opens up to a few strides in a trot, then a rolling canter. I am trying my best to stay in the rhythm of the strides, hold Brandy to the hill so as not to ride through the cattle, and position myself to head off the few cows chasing Jamie as he rides down on Mac’s herd ahead of us. Hearing me coming, he looks back, “Ride around them, not at them!” he hollers. I take Brandy farther up the hillside, then head down hill, aiming to cut our cows from following Jamie. He also wheels Earl around, and then yells to me, “Push these guys on down the road a ways!” He heads back to the other herd, which, stretched out as it was, has taken a wrong turn. I ride up on the already trotting cows and start whooping and yelling, they move along fine, and after a bit, I turn back to the others. They have gotten our herd settled and moving again, and I wait up the hill until they go past, and fall back into place as a rear guard.
The rest of the trip is more of the same, riding through bush, stepping the horses over downed logs, crossing a few small creeks, all the while the mountains looming larger over us, the pine and fir forest full of sticky geraniums and lupine.
We come around a finally corner, and there is our barbed wire gate. Emma opens it without dismounting, and we count the cows again going in. We seem to have lost one somewhere, but no one knows when it could have been. We hope the cow will show up on her own.
Having finished our day’s work, we settle down for a picnic in the mountain sun. The Freemans have a traditional spot, in the elbow of quicksilver Whitney Creek. We all munch happily on ham sandwiches, our horses hitched to trees and nibbling the mountain grass. After a quick nap, cowboy hats shading faces, we mount up for the trip home. The gallop home, as it turns out. I can hardly keep from singing with the branches whipping by and Brandy’s hooves drumming the road. This is just about right.

To Buy a Hat

Space is something that the Albertans aren’t short on. Sure, they aren’t making any more land, but for the moment, there seems to be plenty of it round here. It takes at least 40 minutes driving to get from one town to the next. Along the way are spaced out farms and ranches, signs warning that it is 50 km to the next rest stop, and hawks pirouetting in three dimensions. Huge railroad trestles sweep over river bluffs and cutbanks, hopscotching over the roofs of barns and farmhouses. Trees fill the hollows, and only windblown grass and windmills and hold onto the low ridges. Through it all winds the sparsely traveled highways.
I was zooming down those highways in search of a cowboy hat. I wanted the genuine article. Not some gawky tourist bauble, but a working cowboy hat that would keep elements off my head. The little Nissan has a few short comings, but it handles well. I had the windows open to keep cool and tried to follow other vehicles in lieu of a speedometer. I sang all the songs I knew to replace the radio.
In Claresholm, partway to Calgary, I found the store everyone had been recommending to me. It was a big place, almost a department store of saddles, tack, wranglers, and a hat counter. Since it was unmanned, I wandered the store a bit, handling spurs, ogling the chaps, (pronounce the “ch” like you would in Cheyenne, not chuckwagon) and milling about until I saw a likely attendant. She was a pretty young women, and I had held the door open for her on my way in, so I had at least enough familiarity to interrupt her folding the jeans. She smiled and followed me over to the hat counter. I pointed out the brown, wide brimmed hat that had struck my fancy.
“Hmm…ok. What is your size?” she frowned.
“Seven” I ventured.
More scowling.
It looks like we don’t have any more of that one in brown. We don’t seem to have any in sevens in brown at all.”
I was a bit stunned. I had just driven for an hour to get here, and they didn’t have any.
“You don’t have more in the back?”
“No, we sold a lot of hats this past week. Stampeded is coming up.”
She and another saleswomen then proceeded to explain that when a hat company changes colors they have to shut down for several days. They only get hat shipments every six weeks. I Would have to wait six weeks to get the brown hat I wanted. That was out of the question. We were going to be riding on Wednesday. I needed a hat that I could walk out with.
After milling about a bit more, I bought a slate blue silk scarf. At least I could get a bandana out of the trip. And a milkshake, bought on the way out of town.
In the truck on the highway again, in between verses of “King of the Road,” I decided not to give up. At Fort McCleod, I turned east, and headed to Lethbridge, an hour towards Saskatchewan. The mountains now faded completely out of view in the mirror. Winds buffeted the little truck, and I started me repertoire over from the top.
Countless minor rises and half a dozen crossings of the Old Man River later, I saw the biggest railroad trestle yet. Behind it was a low swath of dark trees, telltale sign of settlement. I swept up the side of the bluff into Lethbridge. Not far into town, I noticed a bookstore and pulled in. I hadn’t browsed through a bookstore in the last three weeks, and I couldn’t resist. Plus I figured I could ask about a store that would sell me a hat.
As I walked in, I noticed a rangy older man leaning against one of the windows, engrossed in a magazine. His pale round ten gallon hat had sweatstains round the brim, and his bright yellow scarf contrasted with a scarlet western shirt. As I walked up to him, I noticed he had a cane and a sprawling white handlebar moustache.
“Excuse me sir, I have a question, and you look to be the one ask.” He looked up at me, surprise in his eyes. “I’m looking to buy a hat.”
“A hat, eh? Well…I reckon old George would sell you a hat. You know the old cigar store on third?”
“I’m afraid not, I’m not from around here.”
“Oh really?” He seemed genuinely surprised, and interested. He shifted his cane, leaned farther back to see me better. “Whereabouts then?”
“I’m from Idaho, but I’m working in Pincher Creek for the summer.”
“You can’t buy a hat in Pincher?”
“No sir. I asked around, and it isn’t a big enough town to be overlooking a place.”
“Well, to get to this place, you just need to go out here, and take a right after three blocks. You’ll come to a cigar store, I don’t know what street it is, I never remember their names, but there is a cigar store right on the corner. Turn left and just a few buildings and you’ll see it. Just a real small place, but he’s got lots of hats. And he’ll shape ‘em for you too, make sure they fit just right.” I had noticed as he pointed out his directions on the bench that he only had three fingers, no thumb or index finger on his right hand. I thanked him, and he gave me a broad smile and wished me luck. Off I went to George’s.
I found the cigar store easy enough, parked and started walking. I was pretty sure I had missed the place, or it had moved, when I saw a sign for boots, letters far to small to read while driving by. I opened the door and stepped inside.
“Hello!” called an old man cheerily, and went back to talking with a customer. I looked back into the gloom. On the right of the store were floor to ceiling shelves, stretching back to the far wall, filled with cowboy boots. Up high a row of straw hats hung on nails. On the other side maybe five yards distant were boxes and boxes of hats stacked up to the ceiling behind a counter. Hats on display hung the full distance back to the end of the store. There was a gently feel of dustiness, coming from from the brick walls than the wares. The store was out of another era.
The proprietor finished up his business, promising the hats by the next day for the customer, who promised not to leave Lethbridge without coming back. He was obviously a tourist, and the old man assured him he was making a good choice buying a good hat. As the man walked out the door, George turned to me.
“And what can I do for you today?”
“I would like to buy a hat, and a fellow with three fingers told me this was the place”
“What do you need the hat for?”
I explained that I was working as a cowboy on a ranch in Pincher.
“Will you be working in the winter?”
“Well, no”
“Then you ought to get a straw hat, I have fifteen felts, and not a one has sweatstains, I only wear straw in the summer.” Sure enough, he had a straw hat on.
“Well, I would like to get a felt, something that will really last.”
“Alright then. What were you thinking?”
I told him I would like something with a flatter crown, and preferably brown. I pointed to one hanging up.
“Well, lets try it out.” He carefully took it off its nail, and equally carefully set it on my head. “Oh dear. Terrible.”
I looked at him surprised, and amused. “Really? I liked it. Do you have a mirror?”
“No. But I have a Hutterite television. Go take a look.”
I did, the mirror up front where the light was good. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. The brown wasn’t great, but I thought it was more my shirt than me that was the problem.
“See, it isn’t your color. Let’s try this.” He lifted a pale buckskin hat, swapped it out, sent me back to the mirror. “No, not that one either. Just bad.”
I was confused, I didn’t think either looked too bad.
“Lets try a grey, eh? Oh yes! This is your color…or maybe black…(quickly exchanged the grey for the black) oh yes. Black is best.”
I took a look in the mirror. The hat he had selected didn’t have a flat crown, but double peaks running the length, a style called the cattleman crown, the brim had a hard curl on the front corners. I thought I looked a bit like a country musican, and not much like a cowboy.
“I would sort of like a flatter brim,” I hinted.
“I can’t sell you that. It would look dumb. Your face isn’t round enough, maybe if you had a fat face, but now. He pointed to his cheekbones, his nose, “See here, here,” he pointed to the hat brim showing the angles with his hands, “see this fits.”
I wasn’t convinced, and he could see it. He grabbed a straw hat off the boot shelves, one with a completely flat brim in the back. He handed it to me, sent me to the “Hutterite television”. “See you look dumb. I do the hats for the rodeo queens from Red Dear on south to the states, and you know, it takes such a little thing to make the look smart, to get them to win. I couldn’t sell you a hat with a flat brim. I could do a bit flatter, but I have to be responsible. I’ll flatten if for you because you want me to, but if were walking around Pincher Creek and I saw you with my hat, and you looked silly, well what could I do?”
I had to acquiesce to his expertise and laughing obstanancy. He took the hat from me. “You going to wear it in the rain?”
“I am, when it rains.”
“Well this hat can put up with most everything. It costs $139. Did you come in with a smile?”
I laughed, “Why, I believe it did! I was happy to find this place.”
“Well, since you don’t have fag tags, I guess I can give you a discount.”
“Fag tags?”
“Yeah, those guys that come in here with their eight year old girl haircuts and a mountain goat hanging off their face, well I don’t give them a discount.”
I had to laugh. This nice old man, who hadn’t yet broken his smile was quite a wellspring of culture, to be sure. He gently took my hat, and took it to the back of the store. Behind a small glass counter full of moccasins, leather tools, dirty hats waiting to be cleaned, and chap patterns, he fired up his steam machine. He took the hat between his palms, fingers splayed and not touching the hat.
“Now if anyone ever shapes your hat, and he grabs it like this:” he grabbed the brim with his fingers, “you get your hat back and come here. These are the sensors. See, and I can funnel the steam.” He gripped the hat, and slowly bent brim flat. Then he bent the front corners up. I was happy to have my hat. He pulled the brim liner down, and sprayed the inside with water. He put the hat on my head, pushed hard, and told me to wear it till it was dry.
I paid for my hat, thanked him, and started out the door.
“Wait,” he called. He rushed up, took the hat and bent it a few times around the brim, ever so slightly. He set back on my head, and sure enough, now if fit perfectly. “And it looks good from the back, good with your shoulders.” I thanked him, and head out the doors, back to the road and back to the mountains. Thanks to George I was really ready for the summer.

Ranchin’ Wisdom

Twenty-five pairs to a section for the summer is good for the cows and the land. Especially if you divide it with a fence, and graze one part hard, then switch sides.

A heifer counts as 2/3rds of a pair.

You really ought to say hello if you've met someone. That means handshakes, chit chat, keeping up on their kids, and helping out at their place.

Bulls shouldn’t be angered, but they can also be whacked pretty good without making them angry.

Throwing a lariat is a hell of a lot of fun.

Most anything can be washed off your hands, or clothes, or face.

Milking a beef cow is a five man, two horse job.

Don’t walk alone at night in Waterton. There aren’t muggers, just cougars.

Don’t take corners too fast in a flatbed pickup with a bucketful of staples.

Try to keep grass to a minimum when cleaning up spilled staples, even if it was the ranchers fault.

Argue if you need to.

Get clear directions to where you are going. Even if you have to ask for a map.

Learn to memorize numbers, e.g. 503a, 503b, 61, 349. They are cows, and they have different needs, destinations, and temperaments.

Always trust a vet, he does things you really really don’t want to, mostly involving the back end of bulls.

Cowboys really do yell “Get along now!” “Giddy-up!” and “Yeehaw,” (perhaps because of Roy Rogers).

You need four wheel drive.

You don't NEED a speedometer (or seatbelts, or tight steering, or upholstery on your seat, or latching doors, or window cranks...)

Branding

Tuesday was branding day at Mac’s. Us Pica Springs hands did some fencing, ran some errands in town, and packed. The skies were threatening, and Cass warned us that it might get called off. But 3:30 came with no call from Mac so we piled into the old flatbed Dodge with all our stuff and off we rattled to the MX Ranch.

It was drizzling when we got there, but Mac just nodded at the sky and said, “We’ll see.” He was tall, had a full mustache (like almost everyone else at the branding, it would turn out), used his words sparingly. He gave me a hearty handshake, and told me he was glad to have me there, though. He was wearing his slicker, a dark oilskin jacked. I just had the crappy yellow vinyl kind. Someday.

We loaded up the chuckwagon with our supplies, and bedrolls, and ol’ Dennis hitched up his team of Suffolk Punch draft horses. They were almost six foot at the shoulder it seemed. Big. But calm. Finally, after Tony arrived, and saddled up, we were off. The Suffolks took us at a good trot, and it was surprisingly comfy to ride on the wagon. My fellow ranch hand Thomas and I just sat up top, Lydia (Thomas’s girlfriend) got to ride shotgun. I think Dennis enjoyed sharing the narrow bench a bit more than she might have.

In front of us, the road was steep and muddy. Several times we had to get off and walk, to lighten the load. Several times, I was nervous that we wouldn’t pull through. But we did, never once bogging down. As we went along, the cowboys and girls started peeling off, heading up into the hills to bring down the cattle. Soon we were all alone, but in the distance I could see the cowboys working. Tony scared up a coyote. The sleek grey-brown dog leapt a few bushes and melted into the woods. We could hear the drum-like sound of grouse calling mates. The sun was slowly slipping behind the mountains, and we rolled up to camp.

Our duty was to set up, and cook dinner. We had a cooler full of steaks, a giant can of beans, and a sack of potatoes. And some butter, salt and pepper. So we wrestled a wall tent up (which included me skinning up an aspen to lash a pole). We put the tipi aside, having no idea how one of those got up, and we started dinner. Meanwhile, the clouds broke. I heard hooves, and turning about, I saw the cowboys riding up from round up, riding toward the sun, and toward us. I had just enough time to snap a photo.

Mac helped us set up the tipi. As he said, “It takes two good squaws. Or a dozen white men.” It was a tricky deal, but logical. There are three main tripod poles, and the rest get laid on those in a circle. The door has to face east, and there is a single anchor rope which runs around all the poles where they meet and then is staked down near the center of the tipi floor. It sure beats a tent, since there is so much room to stand up inside. We should have made a fire, but never did.

Finally, after a few drinks and plenty of story telling, horse talk, and laughing, well all turned in for what was going to be a cold night under the stars, with only a layer of canvas and some nylon down between us and the universe. It was cold, and I wasn’t that bothered when I had to get up at 5:30, when the light sidled in through the tipi seams. Stepping out there was a cold clear frost on everything. The fire had been rekindled by Thomas, up just a minute or two before me, and we three cooks started our early work. We cut the leftover potatoes, put on a pot of coffee, and started laying out the bacon. Lydia mixed up the pancakes. Before long, the cowboys were milling about, sucking their coffee and hunching their shoulders. The smell of frying bacon got most everyone out of bed.

Soon more folks started to show. By seven, the whole crew had arrived. There were Wyatt and Mickey, Mac’s boys. There was Dennis, the old cranky roper who thought I stole his gloves until late afternoon when I found them in the back of his truck. Travis, the quiet roper who seemed to never miss. Jack and Jordy, pure cowboys who ride a ranch in Saskatchewan for a living. Ed, the castration man, always ready with a joke, always asking, “We got nuts?” Riley, fourteen or so, with a handshake like a printing press. Ed’s dad, born 1924, a cripple, who found his calling on the back of a horse. Tracy: taxidermist, ranch manager, and individualist. Ross, the Englishman who had become a cowboy. The whole bunch were as diverse as the trees in the valley, all bound together by friendship and love of their landscape and its history. They were keeping this all alive.

Finally, about 9:00, the cattle were all rounded up. The horseless, myself included, had chopped firewood for the branding fire, and set up all our supplies. On either side of the fire were two pairs of “forks” a sort of a calf immobilizer. It was my job to run one of these contraptions. Before long, a roper started my way, lariat dallied around his horn, calf roped by the back legs, dragging toward me tail first. I gripped my fork, tense as the bawling calf. I jammed the fork down, pulling the rope the held it taught as the roper took out the slack on his end. There was the calf, stretched out in front of me, helpless, and ready to be worked on.

Before I could even congratulate myself for doing a good job, first try, the other workers swooped in. Lydia had one vaccine. Joann had another. Bill was had the brand, Tony the dehorning iron. Ed his jackknife. In a flash, it was over. I signaled the roper, and popped the forks off up over the calf’s head. Off he wobbled, understandably a bit tender. The heifers still had a bit more kick afterwards, and one or two had to be chased down, to be freed properly from a lariat or a tangled fork rope. I soon settled into the rhythm, and had reassuringly few go foul on me.

I had picked a bad spot. First forks, right next to the branding fire. I must have pin nearly 80 calves of the 220. Far more than Thomas, who had the experience to know you don’t take the forks by the fire.

By the part way through the day, everyone was wearing down, but there were enough folks that breaks were possible without breaking the work flow. Ropers would switch out to give their mounts a break. I got a reprieve long enough to learn to dehorn and grab some water and food. At about two o’clock, the last calf was dragged my way. As I was about to release him, I looked up to see that three cowboys had roped the only think left in the corral. A yearling heifer. She must have weighed 500 pounds. One had the head, the others were trying for her legs, to pull her over. I looked up at my roper. He siad, “You gonna let me go? I don’t wanna miss the fun.” He was grinning under his mustache. I quickly released my calf, and off he galloped, looping up his lasso as he rode.

The yearling was surrounded, cowboys on all sides, still she kicked, pulled, dragged lariats loose and led the riders on a chase for five minutes. Then in one swift moment she was down, with a heavy bellow and thud. Jordy had hooked her back legs just right, sending her flailing onto her side, to be dogpiled by the branding crew. They dehorned her, vaccinated her, and branded her.

Then the hard work was over. It was time to feast! Wendy, Mac’s wife, had brought up a branding meal. We had chili, potato salad, coleslaw, beef (of course), pie, pie, pie, and cake.

And of course, the oysters. I know them as Rocky Mountain Oysters, the folks here call ‘em prarie oysters. Regardless, they are a branding delicacy. Fried in about a pound of butter, in a cast iron skillet over a camp fire, they are surprisingly tasty. And might account for all those mustaches.

Branding as a job is hot, dirty, smelly and tough. You have to catch 150 pound calves, pin them down, castrated some, burn horns off, burn a brand onto their side, stick them with vaccines, and send them off to their worried moms. Several hundred times. You get kicked now and then, you get bloody, you might even get burned. But you also get to know the folks your working with. You get to know the cows. You get to know the landscape. And somewhere in there, you even get to see a bit about yourself. You can do more than you think.

Work is what people do. Out here, trying to avoid it demeans you, demotes you, and marks you as a weak sort. But if you can make a festival out of work; if you can turn work into something joyful, cheerful, even beautiful, then you have created something bigger than yourself. Something that touches the lives of friends, something that builds a community. That is what branding does.

Photos

For your information: I have captioned and mapped my photos. Take the link on the right hand side, "Photos" and click on the album, "brenner-venice". I hope you enjoy.

Venezia

Venice hunched before me, her shoulder turned away, but questioning if I was going to come along. Pushing my bike through the crowd, one of the Vaporetti water taxis pulled up and tourists flowed around me. Their chatter, their camera pointing urgency struck me as funny, but I couldn’t say why. I eased through, gained the bridge, shouldered my bike, and headed into the warren.
There was no mist in the crumbling stucco fjords of Venice; the late afternoon sun had driven it back. The walls of the buildings were painted in strong colors: yellows, blues, reds. Every bridge had a different wrought iron railing, the same smooth hollow stepped into the stairs. I paused on one bridge to photograph my bicycle, as I had been doing all along, this time with a gondola going by in the back ground.
Deeper and deeper I followed the haphazard signs toward San Marco. Sometimes the houses leaned toward each other in conspiracy, sometimes they had been built together, making a tunnel of the pathway. Always there were more bridges, more canals offering a glimpse that seemed to stretch a bit father, only to run up against yet another columned façade. Churches seemed to sprout like weeds here, and any time I stood in a small square I saw not only the tower of the church on the square, but at least two others. One-up-manship was an old game in these alleys and canals.
Finally, still rolling my trusty Peugeot alongside me, I strode through an archway, and stepped out onto San Marco. The square was bustling with tour groups, tourists, men hawking trinkets and roses, and of course pigeons. Languages of every variety tumbled together, I heard English from Texas, New Jersey, California and London, German from the far north, the sing song notes of Italian, the mercurial tones of French, the fullness of Russian, the smiling gurgle of a Scandinavian vocabulary. Above this crush of people towered the ancient cathedral, supposedly enclosing the bones of St. Mark in its eastern domes and rounded balanced arches and glinting mosaics. The mighty and precarious bell tower, a red arrow tipped in marble white, rose up above even the cathedral. And everywhere long arcades of pillars and the winged lion with his terrible book.
I encamped on the Piazza San Marco, sitting on my bike frame, leaning against the fence that kept people back from the construction to prop up the bell tower. The world wandered by. I hoped quietly that I might see my friend Nicole’s face amidst the crowd. The sun slipped down, the blue of the sky deepened and the crowd begans to slowly thin. The mist from the horizon blended slowly with the few clouds, and the sky faded away to grey, shadows lengthened and washed a cool blue onto the flagstones of the plaza. I had no real hope to find them here, and decided to search for an internet café.
The time for antipasta and dinner arrived, and restaurants were filling up behind warm barred windows. I finally found an internet café, Venice style. Books were propped up between the computer moniters, Charlie Parker solos bounced against the framed art in the window. The tables were antique, with claw feet and heavy, heart-dark surfaces. No email from Nicole. I got ahold of her mother via Skype, who said they hadn’t found their original hotel. She didn’t know where they were staying. I gave her my phone number, for Nicole to call. I wasn’t too hopeful.
Outside the bookshop, night was stealing up from the ground, in Venice like in everywhere else. The dark slowly emerged from the cracks in the flags, took to the alleys, swept out into the larger spaces. It climbed the walls and slowly drew a great canopy over the open sqares. An Italian man in a tweed jacket stopped me. “Scusi” he began, and rattled off some question with the word “Biciclette” in the middle. I automatically responded in German, “Ich kann nicht Italianisch” I don’t speak Italian. He touched his round wire rimmed glasses, “Wieso hast du ein Fahrrad?” What are you doing with a bicycle? I rode from Austria, from Brennero, I told him. He looked at me hard, to see if I was lying, or crazy. From Brennero, he said softly, like a wine taster trying to guess the good wine from the cheap. After another long look at me, I shrugged, “It took four days,” “Four days! Bravo, Bravissimo. “ He said, he clapped me on the shoulder, and shook my hand. We continued walking, the same direction. Why did you do this? I don’t know really, it seemed like a better way to travel. I could experience more. And what are you going to do tonight? I am hoping to find some friends… You should hope to find them! The hotels are full, you will have to sleep under a bridge, or in a gondola! I laughed, and the Italian eyes winked full of mirth and maybe even admiration. You have the first bicycle I have seen in Venice in years, he said. Good luck, with another strong handshake, he turned down an alley and vanished into the gloaming.
I began to prepare myself for a vigil on the streets of Venice. I unpacked my camera, began taking photos of the ever emptying streets, slowly filling with mist. One lone gondolier waited on a bridge, whistling a melancholy tune. A man in a suit passed the gondolier and I, and as he turned out of sight, I heard the echo of his whistling. The same tune. I sat for a cappuccino in a small café, off the beaten track. Posters boasting the wins of the Venice soccer team were framed on the walls. Four patrons gathered at one end, obviously joking with and pestering the matron. She gave as good as she got, at least measured in volume of laughter the two impartial cronies allowed. When I stepped outside, night had arrived.
I walked slowly down the edge of a large canal. A lone Vaporetti slid through the water, the interior lit and bare. Piles of refuse were tucked behind monuments, awaiting the invisible work of dawn. I was glad to be alone. I couldn’t have convinced anyone else to wander the streets of Venice all night, searching down the details and the night scenes that would reveal some unseen part of this overrun city. I saw before me the railstation bridge, that first bridge I had encountered eight hours earlier. Shouldering my bicycle for the umpteenth time, I trudged to the apex. The crowds had thinned, but I leaned on that high point and listened to the current of conversation. Most of the languages were unknown to me, but I could pick out the jokers and the complainers, the merry from the discontent. I could relax in my obvious unfittingness, turn into a piece of the fabulous scenery and melt away as an individual. I could observe. My cell phone rang.
I hurriedly picked up, and Nicole’s voice came from the other side. We excitedly said hello, she asked if I was at San Marco’s and I replied No, I am at the… I was talking into a dead cell phone. Out of battery. I headed back to San Marco’s on the slim but solitary chance that she would head there trying to find me. It was the only point we had, the only words she had been able to get to me. I was half disappointed that my adventure in the night had ended, mostly terribly relieved that I would have a place to stay. Five minutes after I had arrived, having been lost multiple times and run into my own trail at least once, up walked Nicole.
By the time we had walked back to the hotel she had explained some of her adventures, and I some of mine. We were both greedy to fill the others ears, and the conversation was as knotted and confused as the path we took. Arriving at the hotel, which breathed red and gold turn of the century tourism, I tried to convince the girls to get up early with me and see Venice in the empty dawn. I didn’t get any takers, although they agreed to set an alarm for 6:30. I woke up on my own at seven, stole out of the door, and headed for the Rialto Bridge.
Venice was empty. The store fronts were shuttered. The mist obscured the top of the bell tower, and silence lapped at the edges of the canals. The ghosts of the past centuries were there. They weren’t driven into hiding by the vicious consuming of “tourism”. On the white Rialto Bridge, a Vaporetti, bringing the days workers, parted the tomb-like dark of the canal. A barge tied up next to the pier was being uncovered, a floating fruit stand. I stood leaning on the rail, hoping that the Austrian girls would have to come this way, when I heard my name. Turning to look up at them, I forgot to say hello, “I was hoping I would find you.” They laughed. The world is so small, they twittered.
The rest of the day was spent marveling over mosaics in the cathedral, avoiding the swarms of tourists following odd things held up on sticks (a Norwegian flag, a stuffed elephant with streamers, and a bright pink umbrella stuck in my mind), and tracking down the myriad folktales that Betsy had learned on a tour a few weeks before. We saw stone lions that had come to life and mauled rivals to the owners, the sketches of a twelfth century insomniac stone carver in marble, and the tiny heart that reminds passersby of a sailors ill-advised affair with a mermaid. The day pulled on, and I was glad I had the day before to observe on my own. These sights were interesting, and most of them more or less off the beaten tourist path. It was a joy to be with the laid back Austrians, who didn’t have much use for the souvenir shops. They didn’t think to buy their trip, or give it back as anything besides a story to the folks back home.
Finally, it was time for me to catch my train. I rushed to the station, met the Americans again (we had seen each other on an off throughout the day) barely had time to buy my ticket and rushed to the platform. Most the passengers were already boarded. I rushed up to the first second class door, heaved it open and started to heft my bicycle. A conductor rushed up. “No!” he said.
“I have a ticket,” I said, waving my bicycle ticket.
“Ok then…Wagon six,”
Exasperated, I rushed halfway down the platform, found the sixth car, and again opened the door. Another, bigger, mustachioed conductor came puffing toward me, red in the face.
“No! Biciclette! Impossible!! No no no!”
I thought I had the trump card. “ I have a ticket!”
“No! Impossible”
I reached for my ticket, he reached for the door, “Treno regionale!! Biciclette Impossible!”
I was stunned. He stood in the doorway, pointed at another platform, looked to his colleague, gave a wave, and blew hard on his whistle. The door closed. The train left. I was almost to stunned to cuss. Almost. I suddenly understood the Italian temper, and I raged on the platform for a moment. There was nothing else to do.
Back at the ticket counter, the clerk had to find the man who had sold me the ticket, who then simply refunded my money and made me get in line again. The next train wasn’t until the next day. I decided on Padova, and on the train, gave Betsy and Claudia a call. They were happy to take me, but it seemed it was time for me to get out of Italy. My luck was running out.
The next day, from Padova to Verona, the train was completely full. The conversations bounced off the windows, the roar of the people outdid the din of the train. At each station, the train quieted. More people got off. By Bozen, near silence was the rule. The people left had whispers common in a library. Or a German train. Italian culture was fading into the distance. At the pass, getting out to change trains, we were just five passengers left.
In Brenner, in the train back to Innsbruck, I looked contentedly at my modest white Peugeot. No one in Innsbruck would ever guess that the old bike had made it to the Adriatic. I had done it. It was bittersweet, because it was over, but it I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Now I knew, anywhere with a road was a place I could travel. My freedom was confirmed.

Day 4: The Triumphal Arrival, Padova-Venice

As the sun worked its way in between the heavy wooden slats of the blinds, I reached for my watch. It was already 10 o’clock. Noon at the train station 54 km distant wasn’t going to happen. Even rushing it took about an hour to get my few things back together, drink a good stiff espresso expanded to normal size with milk, gulp down a roll with some baloney-ish sausage slices, and once again don my riding shorts and the wool knickers that afforded some decency and extra padding. The Austrians were headed to Venice the next day, and they said they would give me a call early the next morning.
Padova turned out to be a seriously large city. I learned later that it is at least twice the size of Innsbruck, and finding my way out of town on the right road was even more difficult than in Trento. I followed a tame river until the other cyclists and pedestrians petered out and I found myself headed the wrong way next to a four-lane highway. Betsy had warned me that the Italians were bad drivers, and this turned out to be more true in the city than it had been on the roads down out of the highlands. Circling around in an edge shopping district, I had to navigate the labyrinth of Ikea and her brethren. These stores were guarded by huge no-mans-lands of parking lots, and a tangle of communication trenches were formed by the twisting links to the arterial roads. The few plants were scrawny, new, out of place. There were no humans, only their bristling glass and steel transport machines, screaming past, blaring attacks on their horns. I was at war with the cars. I couldn’t ask anyone for directions, because everyone was in a rush, and armored from contact anyway.
By a stroke of good fortune, I glimpsed one of the familiar blue bicycle signs, my own personel “blaue Blume” that were always leading me onward. This took me to a pedestrian and bicycle bridge spanning an otherwise insurmountable “Autostrada,” the six-lane Italian autobahn. Oddly, the bike path ended just after the bridge, but at least now I was outside the city. Following near the train tracks I found my way to the countryside, and one again was riding next to a verge of tall grass, past homes and trees and fields. I could relax. There was still an escape to be found from that mall-like anti-landscape. Soon, I met with Highway 11; the road that my map promised would lead me to Venice. After the first town, I saw the confirmation: Venezia 32. Closer than expected.
Soon, the towns began to boast Villas, markets, hotels. I had entered the Venetian Sphere of Tourist Influence. A still river on my right slowly revealed itself as a canal, complete with drawbridges, barberpost hitching poles, and a tourist boat. An old man saw me reading my map and seemingly asked where I was going. “Si, Venezia” he nodded, pointing with a frail hand down the road, and then tottered off. I pushed myself, wanting to arrive, wanting to find my American friends, wanting a shower and lunch and the fulfillment of my journey.
But slowly, the architecture began to change again. Not into the old Byzantine patterns of Venice, but into the huge steel and smokestack fragmentation of an industrial port. Still the signs were pointing to Venice. Then after several miles the signs to Venice vanished, except for one that said “Boat” along with three other languages terms for that mode of transport. I arrived at a t-intersection, and had the choice of “Malcontenta/Venezia Boat” or “Mestre,” which I knew had a bridge to Venice, but I was told I would have to take the train from there. Being ever the romantic, I decided on the boat.
Five level, breezy, hot, tired kilometers later, I arrived at what was clearly a ferry terminal. A KOA style campground filled the landward side of the view, while the sea stretched off to a horizon on my right. A row of cafes on piers beckoned, and the lap of waves agains stones drifted up evenly. I rode to the end of the wharf, and through the gauzy sea air the cupolas, domes, and towers of Venice rose on the horizon. There, just beyond that short bay, lay the city of power, beauty, intrigue, decadence, and decay that had captured so many imaginations. It beckoned, unclear, near but mysterious in the afternoon heat. And I was going to arrive in the same manner as those first Venetians who had retreated to their lagoon in the first place, by boat. The schedule said a boat left in one hour. I went to buy a ticket.
Behind the ticket counter, the girl smiled, was about to give print me the ticket. “The bicyle doesn’t cost extra, right?” She looked at me, and in solid English replied, “You can’t take the bicycle.”
I was stunned. “Why not?”
“There is no place on the boat, you must lock it here.”
“There’s no way?”
“You don’t need it in Venice anyway.”
“But I came so far! And I am not going back this way!”
“Well, then you have to go back to Malcontenta, then back to Mestre, and over the bridge.”
“Can’t I take it apart or something? The ferry goes right to San Marco!”
“I am sorry, but I can do nothing.”
I looked at her, and she at me. It wasn’t up to her. And I didn’t have the wiles to know how to get her to let me take the bike. It looked like I was going to have to ride for another hour. I decided I had to take my licks.
“Well, thank you,” I said with a sigh, and remounted me bike. Malcontenta. What a fitting name for this little dead end.
“Good luck!” she yelled after me. I waved, and was off down the road, passing other cyclists who obviously weren’t going to Venice, but just out for their afternoon exercise. I worked my way back through the industry, into a town, and finally, onto a long, high overpass, luckily with a pedestrian sidewalk. Then I was lost. I asked a woman in a newsstand how to ride to Venice, and she claimed I could catch the train somewhere named, “Santa Lucia.” All I had to do was ride on the freeway for a half-mile. Then I would have a bike route again. I wasn’t too keen on the idea, seeing as the freeway only had a shoulder roughly two meters wide, and the trucks were often right on the while lines. But then, I had come this far, and I wasn’t going to turn back now. I pedaled off, my shoulder almost against the guardrail, terrified the whole time. I was alert to every sound, every bit of motion around me. I crossed an on ramp just in time, and a low sports car roared around the corner and swung past me by mere feet.
I looked up, and suddenly, I saw a break in the guardrail. I took it, looked down the bike path that now stretched ahead and saw the bridge. Perched at the end, low and still hazy, was a huge dome. Venice was at the end of the bridge.
Gulls and long thin barges crisscrossed the bay. I was the only person on the bridge. I rode as quickly as I dared between the balustrades. I came to the end of the bridge. I turned a corner, saw buses disgorging tourists. I went through a passage. A wide walkway, a tall stepped bridge, and rows of buildings seemingly rising from the water took me aback. I was standing at the Grand Canal.

Day 3: The Long Haul, Borgo Valsugana to Padova

The morning found me up early, waiting for my sorry hostel breakfast and then in the train. Getting out in Borgo, I see it is a small village, not too impressive from the train station. But then, cities usually have their backs to the tracks. Wandering down into town, I bumbled into yet another market day. On a Thursday in April, the whole town was outside buying everything imaginable, basking in the life that glowed all around. I wandered happily, came to the river, cross the cobbled bridge, crossed back further down stream. I was reminded of Freiburg in Germany, which also has water gushing along the streets; which I have also only seen in the youthful glow of April. The pastels of the worn buildings threw the bright merchandise into the foreground. Ruby red strawberries, gleaming white sneakers, glistening black belts as wide as a fist.
In a fruit cellar just of the crowded river, a woman let me go ahead in line, and chirped something in Italian. I looked apologetically at her, shrugged my shoulders. She tried English, “So many people here,” she said, smiling and motioning me forward. Her stooped figure only came up to my chest. We chatted, and lke so many she was impressed by my trip. She asked me what I thought of Italy. I told her it was beautiful. “Yes,” she replied, “Nothing like it in America.” As my fruit was carefully wrapped in white paper, she told the woman working, “Today we are internationalé,” and got a genuine laugh.
I bought pears, rolls, strawberries and a slice of cheese as big as my whole hand for less than five euro. Road food in Italy was improving as the towns where I bought it shrunk. On the way out of town, I pointed down river and asked a man in a suit, “Padova?” Stunned for a moment, he laughed and nodded, “Si, si, Padova!”
In moments, I was out of town, following cliffs to my right and the river to my left. Climbing up and cruising down on hips and fans and swales. Water falls tumbled from the highs every few thundered yards. It was the Columbia Gorge made out of marble and limestone, with Italian farms as staffage figures. More and more, as I encountered gardens I slipped past blooming fringes. At eleven, my Peugeot was still fully functional, and I pass from the state of Trento into the state of Veneto. Other cyclists begin to appear again, often giving me a amicable nod and a “Ciao”. My hopes are soaring, and I think I will probably be able to make it to Padua. The towns seem to be hurrying to greet me. I see a sign to Asiago, but I can’t make the detour. No time to be climbing mountain switchbacks just for some cheese. I stopped for lunch in the shade of a bridge, where sings pointed to a Elefante Bianco Cave. Divers were to wear three headlamps, and dive alone. The water was cool, and I relaxed for forty minutes, enjoying my strawberries and amazing cheese sandwiches.
Back on the road, the sun ahead and on my right a reassurance of direction, I noticed the first olive trees of my trip. I rode past all sorts of terraces, all sorts of fruit trees in bloom. Vines creep up the crumbling plaster of the facades. Each town is full of apartment-sized buildings, clustered around a church. The gardens and fields and wild margins fill up the rest of the trip. I made a last curve, and the Alps ended. Just like that. One last steep ridge fell into the valley floor, and then no more valley. In the hazy sea heavy distance baroque and measured towers lifted themselves above a city.
In Bressano, I tracked down the internet. The only place I could use it was the local library, tucked away behind a monastery. The foyer was an arcaded courtyard with students and a roman chariot lounging side by side. Busts and roman inscriptions filled the walls. I learned I had at least 40 km to go, and headed off across the flats.
In the mountains, on the bike path, wayfinding was simple. In the flats, I had to make choices. I learned to grab my map without taking off my pack, and stopped at every crossroad. People I asked for directions were confused and spoke only Italian. One man I met under a bridge shook his hand as if burned when I said the word “Brennero.” His motions helped, and I gathered I had to make two rights, a left, and straight ahead. He happily sent me on my way, and after two rights I was on a dirt path. The next man told me 2k, a left, 2k, a right, 25 k to Padova. I followed signs, and avoided roads with trucks. I was always ending up on roads with trucks again.
After far too much pedaling, I saw signs to Padova on one long straight busy road. 20k. I was exhausted. 15k, not so far, I tried a burst of speed. 12k. I was fading fast. I stopped to lay down, drink some water in a park. The fountain was broken. My shoulders were killing me, and my neck was joining the plot. My energy was at the breaking point. Finally, I saw a sign announcing my arrival in Padova. But this looked quite different from a city where Galileo once taught. A man on a bicycle came by. Outfitted in overalls and a broad black moustache, I had to think of Mario. I asked him how to get to the center. He motioned me to follow along. “Hwhere you afrom,” he half sang at me, then “hwhata a state?” when I told him the USA. “Idaho” he mumbled, visibly hearing the word for the first time. “Good times in Padova, you go left now,” and with a wave and “Arrevedercci” he pedaled off slowly straight ahead, knees working out from the bicycle like a crab.
When I reached the center of town, I realized I had not yet contacted Betsy, the Innsbruckerin in Padova. I had met her my very first day in Innsbruck, at her going away party. Now she was studying here The information desk was closed, so she was my only real hope. It was pushing 7 o’clock. I decided to call Claudia, her friend whose Austrian number I had. No answer. Now what.
Leaning on my bike, looking at the ancient towers, I wished for a sleeping bag. Then my phone rang. “Hello?” “Ja Hallo! Dan, how are you, I am in Padova!” Stunned, laughing, too blow away to really process this I replied, “So am I! Where can we meet?” In fifteen minutes, I was in Betsy’s apartment chatting away in German.
After a drip fed shower and some gnocchi, I was feeling better. We headed down town to the weekly Wednesday night student swarming of the town square. Everywhere were happy crazy Italians. Some girls Betsy had met once before took a bite of my pizza, a swig of my beer, and gave me 3-year-friend hugs and cheek kisses when we wandered off. Ten minutes later they walked past and didn’t say a word. Maybe they didn’t recognize us. Maybe that is Italy.
When we once again bicycled to the apartment, out of the old town, it was about 2 in the morning. I was supposed to be in Venice the next day at noon. I wasn’t so sure that was going to happen, as I awaited sleep, dead tired on Betsy’s floor.

Day 2: The Going Gets Rough, Bozen to Trento

Awaking in the strange room, I had that momentary disorientation of travel. Where was I? What was I doing? Before wakefulness really took hold there was a slip through panic even as I realized I knew where I was. But was I really crazy enough to think I could do this, ride all the way to Venice? It was still early, maybe 7:30, earlier than my hosts were getting up. I sat on the side of the bed, looking at my pack and its various contents strewn on the floor. Well, I have to keep going now. I can’t give up. I shook my head at myself.
Before long I heard Igor and Anna moving about the apartment. We said good morning and sat down to coffee and coffee cake on their small balcony. Igor told me it was the first time this year it had been warm enough in the morning to eat outside. I was glad he let down his joking at my wonderment of spring, taking me in on this small but important event. He added that since the cherry trees are blooming now they will probably have cherries by mid May. They noticed I was nervous and assured me that the way to Trento wasn’t hard, and not long. I would be there in a couple hours, they insisted. Then I could head up into the Valsugana like we had discussed the night before while leaning over my map. But Trento was 60 kilometers off, and I was not so sure it would be quite as quick as they were claiming. Then there was a hill climb up into the Valsugana. I had visions of Tour D’France alpine stages, and was not terribly keen on the idea. Igor showed me where to pick up some provisions, and I bade them both farewell. I truly hope to see them again someday, those generous new friends of mine.
Feet in my clips, I felt at once eased from my earlier anxiety. The immediacy of the pedals gave me a grip. I wound my way back to toward the main square. Crossing the bridge, I thought of the distant greenbelt so like this one I am on. Nature uses the same patterns in Idaho as Italy, and the cottonwoods smelled of home.
Coming around a corner in the city I stumbled on a street market. The sun streamed down the long alleys and illuminated eggplants, daffodils, and spring greens. A stand loaded to groaning with giant pale cheeses had a long line. I can’t help but think Italy must be like this everyday. In the alleys I heard hearty greetings in Italian and Südtiroler dialect, watched an old man stop his bike to chat with a friend, passed two nuns quietly. Finally, I sat in the town square, drinking a pattern garnished cappuccino in the sun. The Italians next to me had stylish sunglasses, light tailored suits, and talked animatedly before reading the newspapers. I didn’t understand a word, but the urgency of their voices worked at me until I paid my bill and swung up onto my bike and headed for the river and the edge of town.
As I left the industrial zones of the city’s fringe behind the valley opened up before me. The day before I had been squeezed next to the river by the steep valley walls. Only bends in the river or large valley branches had allowed enough flat ground for towns, and many were built on the steep mountainsides anyways. Now I followed a wide flat valley floor, full of orchards and vineyards. The bike path was built up on an old railroad dyke, sometimes so steep off each side that it had to be enclosed with a fence. The elevated route gave me a view over to the russet roof tiles of each village I passed. Some of them were right up at the cliffs, and had waterfalls plunging into their midst. Other cyclists were also more regular, from a huge group of young racers forming a candy colored peloton to the groups of four or five middle aged men that would stream past me in a few seconds, pedaling for the imagined leaders jersey. I was the only person with a pack, and the only person with wool pants. I quickly shed them and got used to the spandex shorts, it was just too warm for Swiss military surplus.
As an older couple was coming toward me, I heard a sudden hiss, and felt as deflated as my tire. I pulled over, flipped the Peugeot onto its back like a dead bug, and had a look. My rear tire was worn though completely. A section of rubber the size of my thumb was missing, exposing the fibers to the road. They had given through at one small point. I was going to have to shim the tire, and if that didn’t work, I would have to walk the two miles or so to the next town. Patching the tire went quickly, and many of the cyclists that went by tossed me inquiring glances, and a few asked if I needed help, some in Italian. Fairly quickly I had things back in order, and carefully folded a granola bar wrapper into the inside of the tire at the point of the laceration. I inflated the tire. It had a dangerous bulge at the shim, so I let out some air, mounted the wheel, and tried not to think about it. My ears were over alert to every creak and squeak of my bike now. I came to a sign directing me to Auer or Trento. Two kilometers to Auer. No distance marked for Trento, but another village in 10km. I decided to go with Trento, taking a chance but perhaps saving time. I would try in Neumarkt. Those 10 kilometers were tense, several times I thought I felt my back wheel settle down or jump, only to keep riding with nothing the matter.
I got to the little town at about 11. It boasted a station of the ancient Roman road up through the alps and again, it was market day. Perhaps I was right in my suspcion that every day was market day in Italy. I asked a woman looking at some shoes if she could direct me to a bike stand. She looked at me with wide eyes, then lit up a tad and called her daughter over. I inquired again, still in German, and the girl replied with a friendly school level German in a strong Italian accent. A bike shop was at the end of this road. I thanked them both, and found the shop easily. Unsure whether to greet them in Italian (one of my few mastered Italian phrases) or German, I stood unsure of myself until they noticed me. They looked mildly perturbed to see a helmeted backpacked cyclist in their shop. I asked for a tire, showed him my bike, and he quickly replaced the tire with a slightly wider one, the whole while speaking the tough dialect of Südtirol German. He smiled when he pulled the tube from the old tire and the wrapper fluttered to the ground. The whole thing two about five minutes, and he charged me only 12 euros total. It would have been twice that in Innsbruck. Italy was a good land to land a deal in, it seemed.
Back on the road, the day slipped by, and I slowly rolled down the valley. A great bird of prey with a mouse in its talons swooped only a few yards over my head when I was near a cliff at one edge of the valley. It had to be a golden eagle; the fierce symbol of every empire which ever conquered this area. In the distance the cliffs towered vertically several thousand feet up, lending the valley an almost Yosemite like feel. Glinting snow capped peaks were visible up the sharp side canyons and in both directions up and down the wide valley. I stopped for lunch at an old section of roman road, no longer seeing the stones but the route described by an info board. North and south the valley was taking on a more lowland feel, the air was slightly gauzy, blueing the distant hillsides and drawing out distance.
After lunch, I met with my own exhaustion for the first time. As I pedaled, I couldn’t seem to find a single comfortable position on the saddle or the handlebars. My legs were resisting me. Every time the path took turn that seemed to aim me away from the ever nearer midway goal of Trento, I groaned. I tried pedaling faster, aiming to get more speed, and make the exhaustion end more quickly. I tried shifting gears, getting my pedal rotation quicker to ease the individual turns of the pedals. I tired reciting things in my head, singing songs, thinking about Venice, thinking about the coming summer, thinking about anything but the growing fatigue. I passed a man on a nice road bike, just to make myself feel better. He quickly passed me back, and pulled into the distance.
At one point, with only a hundred yards of flood plain between me and the river, I saw something I couldn’t quite believe. For just a few seconds I saw a lamb. It was white from head to toe, somewhat stretched and gangly in the way of young animals. There were no other sheep that I could see. I never saw another, or where that one could have come from. I only barely saw it long enough to be sure it existed. In the first moment it was so unexpected that I had no idea what it could be, so ghostly and silent and wandering up the riverbank, white and clean against the muddy spring flow. In a blink it was behind me, and I never saw any sign of why it had been there.
Finally, legs, neck and shoulders aching, I hit the outskirts of a large town. In a matter of minutes I was sitting in cloud swept light on the main square. The steps of the fountain were cool, and the square was full of Italian flair. A great cathedral made an angle with the battlements of a castle, both straight from the middle ages. Women of sixty and girls of sixteen wore the same styles, the older women simply with the expensive versions. I rested, in a blank state of waking that comes after exertion and achievement. Slowly, I noticed the vibrancy of this Italian town. Two toddlers excitedly showed each other bugs in a corner of the square. I watched them, then their mothers. There was an ease in the way the mothers chatted which was deep rooted. When one of the children sprang over to his mother, she squatted down next to him, and her joy was in his joy at the antics of some tiny critter.
As the sun again prompted me to get going taking on more a dustier hue by the moment, I set out to find a route out of town. I headed in the direction my map suggested, looking for Via Valsugana. In a park in front of a university building I stopped two girls carrying English dictionaries. They told me there was no bike route. They told me to take the train. As I hesitated in responding to their suggestion, the dark eyed one laughed, “But you are brave man, you must take bicycle!” she grinned. I nodded, glad she understood. They wished me luck, and I set off again. In the same park I found a sign pointing a route to the Via Valsugana, and headed up hill. Before long it seemed my route was ending, so I asked another brace of Italians, this time an old woman and a teenager with a guitar. They at first looked at me with wonderment, then the old woman nodded vigously as the teen explained what I had said. “Si, si, Valsugana!” she said loudly, pointing up the road. I thanked them and moved on. Too soon the sidewalk puttered out, headed off down a long flight of stairs and dumped me at a Franciscan monastery. I tried another couple of passers by, and not a one could help me. I finally headed back into town to ask at the info desk.
The woman at the desk was equally as astounded by my plan. “There is no bike route,” she said, obviously worried about my sanity, “There are tunnels. You must take the train up to the valley.” With these words I relaxed. I was going to have to submit some bit of my journey by bicycle to the rails again, but at least it was another uphill section. I then set out to find a hostel. Luckily, the info desk was more helpful on that more common question. Within half an hour I was set up an a dormitory for the night. After cleaning off the grime, I set off into the twilight.
Being on the road alone had been a joy. No one to explain things to, no one to question, no one to hold up or wait for. I had been completely free. Now, in town, the loneliness that was never there on the road started to take hold. I searched for at least an hour for a restaurant that wasn’t too chic but still more than a pizza stand. I finally found something, but it turned out to be too nice for me anyway. “Solo?” the host asked, as I entered. I nodded, a bit ashamed. I tried to get a plate of local specialties, and ended up with a cafeteria style tray with schnitzel, sauerkraut, spaghetti, salad, fries, and green beans. It was less than what I had hoped for. The whole mean cost me as much as the rest of my first two days, excluded my hostel (which it also eclipsed). The city was beautiful, and walking home I even discovered what seemed to be a spontaneous student party. But even after two days on the road alone, I didn’t have the guts to approach foreign students on their home turf. I headed home for an early bed, to get an early start the next day.
Nodding off, I felt both accomplished and discouraged. I had made it this far, but things had gotten rough. I was going to get through, but I was reminded that it didn’t just happen the way I wanted it too. I did have to work, and deal with problems. But the next days problems were a nights sleep off, and I would worry about them tomorrow.

Day 1. The High Valley: Brenner to Bozen

My train left at 11:12 for the top of the pass. That meant leaving at 10:30 from the apartment, giving me time to make it down to the map store, buy a map of Südtirol, then go to the station and get my ticket. Maybe even get a first aid kit at the station pharmacy. I hoped I had everything I need for departure, but if I didn’t, I could probably buy it on the way. Italy isn’t the moon. In the map store I was lucky, the first pastel paper packet I picked up had my start and finish points: on the top edge Brenner, in the bottom right hand corner, Venezia.
At the train station, I got my ticket to the Brenner pass. Three euros without a bicycle. I headed to the counter to get the bicycle pass and buy a return ticket. The girl at the ticket counter eyed me a bit incredulously when I ask for a return ticket from Venice short on the heels of asking for a bicycle ticket. One eyebrow raised, she pecked at her computer and told me it would be better to buy one there. Maybe it was best to travel opened ended anyway, I thought. Back upstairs I tracked down a first aid kit, stowed it in my pack with my few t-shirts and a pair of jeans, and went to unchain my bicycle. Wheeling it toward the platform, I noticed an all to familiar sluggishness. Looking down, I saw an inauspicious beginning to a 300 km journey. I had to pinch the front tire to assure myself. Sure enough, a flat at the train station.
In the train, I examined my old Peugeot. I probably should have given him a more thorough combing over prior to this point, but I was hoping for adventure. For the most part everything looked up to snuff. The wheels were a bit rusty, and the saddle old and hard, the shifters on the down tube, but there were no functional problems, flat tire aside. I greased the chain recently, I had a pump and my tools in my pack, and I could essentially rebuild the bike if I had too. But I was hoping the 12 speeds tacked on to a formerly flashy white, red & orange striped frame would hold out all the way to the Adriatic. I rummaged in my tool kit, looking for the tire repair kit. I couldn’t find it, and decided I would buy one, along with a spare tube, in the tiny hamlet of Brenner, straddling the Italian/Austrian border and the main comb of the Alps.
Getting out, I noticed right away the Italian influence, unfortunately not the renaissance sort. The train station wasn’t up to Austrian standards, mildly grungy, the buildings hunched over the platforms all an odd yellow brown brick. Shouldering my pack and my bike, I headed into town. The folks at a fruit stand sent me to a clothing store. He sent me to a bicycle clothing store. He shook his head. Outta luck. I barely caught the train to the Stertzing, thanks to a helpful conductor with heavily Italian accented German. I pay 4 euros from the 4.10 I happened to have in my pocket. Should carry more cash, I guess. I feel bad that I will miss out on those first 10 kilometers, feel like I am betraying the spirit of my journey, but it was that or walk it.
The train had ads on the walls encouraging people to preserve food from their gardens for the sake of sustainability. I decided I like South Tyrol.
In Stertzing I picked up new tubes, repaired the old one, decided cycling gloves might be a good idea, and bought food for the road. Finally ready to head out. On the edge of town, I heard the air hissing out of my tire again. Stopping, I watch another cyclist go by, and this time found Innsbruck’s parting shards of glass. So, up to now, 2 kilometers down, and 2 flat tires. The stats aren’t with me at this point. Doubts about the practicality of my journey started to swim at the edges of my mind, but pedaling alongside the Italian motorists quickly focused my mind on the present. To my delight, after a mile or so, I saw a sign pointing to a bicycle path. What a pleasant surprise! Peeling away from traffic, following the river and the dark pines, I started to gain my confidence back.
As I crossed a bridge, a large track-suited man on a small mountain bike called out to me. “Not that way!” he rumbles, “You have to follow the signs!” I look around, and sure enough, a small brown sign with a bicycle points me to an overpass. I catch up with the man, and thank him. “Where you headed?” he asks.
“Venice, eventually,” I reply. He likes that, laughing just enough to not steal his energy.
“And today?”
“Bozen”
“And from there to Trento and the Valsugana. That is a nice route. I am only going to Franzenfest,” he replied, knowingly. “This part is pretty up and down though, it isn’t as easy as the next few days.”
We chatted a bit, about my bike, his, how far the path goes, (at least to Trento he is sure) and then part ways. I was a bit faster on the hills, having the bike more inclined to the asphalt path. I waved goodbye as I pulled away, and he wished me luck. I was fully encouraged.
The hours slipped by, my seat grews more and more uncomfortable, and it seemed my pack got heavier with every kilometer. But I am free. I rode through forests of pines, next to the river, usually lower in the valley than the great freeway that winds up this pass. I didn’t have too much time to think at length, mostly being busied with the minutiae of riding. Watch out for that cone, don’t hit the gravel patch, I wonder what that mountain is called, how far to the next town? The few patches of snow grew fewer, the grass greened up.
I was almost the only person on the bicycle path until most of the signs said “Brixen”. Just before town, I had to negotiate a section of gravel and earth path, and the mountain bikers gave me nods, surely thinking I am nuts with my skinny tires and red handlebars. When I come out of the woods, I found spring.
Apple orchards and free stone terrace walls stretched to the slopes of the opposite mountains. A woman with a branch of blooming magnolias called after an old homespun vested farmer, they both nodded hello as I whirred by. The bike path took me straight into an orchard, the small trimmed trees only a few feet form my tires, not much taller than me on the bike. Tiny crystal clear streams overhung by thick daisy strewn sod skipped towards town. In Brixen, the population was out walking, riding bikes, chatting. I heard mostly German, but there was Italian interlaced as well. It was reassuring to see so many people again, for some reason the high valley induced a hurry, which melted away in this spring time crowd.
Just outside of town, I paused at a little bicycle rest area. After three hours of riding, hunger, thirst, sweat, and exhaustion need to be eased. I felt good. I was actually putting my crazy idea into action. The route that I first typed in as a fancy a week earlier to Google maps is now unrolling before my eyes. I am riding my bike to Venice. Eating my energy bars, fruit, and cheese, it struck me how often I fail to recognize the simple act of starting. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. True, Confucious, but Newton was also right when he said that a body at rest tends to stay at rest. It takes a lot of impulse to make that one step. I made it, and now I can’t be stopped. What a world we live in.
An older man sitting across from me said something, startled me out of my thoughts. I didn’t understand. Apologetically, I tell him I can’t speak Italian. He turned to his wife, said something to her, and she began to speak to me in German. I told her my plans, and she was impressed, but warns me that I won’t be able to get to Bozen on this bike path. I will have to bike on the street for a bit. I thanked her. After wishing me luck, she and her husband started back to Brixen on foot, and I mounted up for another couple hours pedaling down to Bozen.
In just a few minutes, I came around a corner to see an amazing castle-like building perched on top of a cliff comes into view. The towers of what I learn is a monastery and the town mirror each other, one high and one low. In the middle of town, I get my biggest surprise. This is the village of Klausen. I knew it was on the way, shortly after Brixen, but I didn’t know it had a castle. After snapping a few pictures, however, the orange tinge in the afternoon sun was enough to speed me on my way. I didn’t want to get caught in the dark, especially because I hadn’t worked out a place to stay in Bozen for the night yet.
Since the bike route was built mostly on an old railroad bed, and since the valley is getting narrower and narrower, I started to go through tunnels. It is cold inside, once I was hit in the face by dripping water and nearly startled into a crash, but I hung on. I had to stop and eat some more of my energy bars, and I feel the hours wearing me down. Then, at the end of one of the tunnels, there is suddenly a delightful spray of graffiti, much more artistic than the typical hiphop names of the various vandals. Blue and white sketches of bicycles, six feet tall, are scattered onto the pillars of an avalanche portico. Such a simple display of affection for bicycles is enough to invigorate me, and in only a few minutes, I see the sign welcoming me to Bozen.
In the town square, golden light is playing off the fountain and the delicate filigree of the gothic church steeple. Everywhere the sandstone buildings seem to glow with spring warmth, and there are even a few potted palms sitting at the corners of the café patios. If only I knew where I was going to sleep.
Luckily that problem was resolved in a matter of minutes. After a check at tourist information, instructions to an internet café, an email check and a phone call, I have affirmation that my attempt at couch surfing will be a success. Both of my emails to Bozen were accepted, Igor and Anna, just 20 years old, invited me stay with them for the night. Happily surprised, Igor told me he will be in the middle of town in half an hour.
The rest of the evening was pleasant, a totally disconnected from the cycling of the day. I wash, change out of my wool knee pants and bike shorts, shower, cook a pizza and chat with these total strangers who offered me a bed for nothing more than asking for it. They have rough South Tyrolean accents, vowels mashed and bent, consonants slipping and scraping. This is a language of avalanches and tumbles, of hard winters and a life scraped out of scant means. They can also speak Italian, and cook me a delicious pizza. I help wash up, offer to do anything I can, go shopping the next morning, and they refuse it all. They are happy just to get to know me, they insist. I tell them about Idaho, about going to school, about Innsbruck, about my journey. They tell me about South Tyrol (unemployment of 1.2% and the biggest political strife is over towns having Italian names as well as German ones on the signs). They are students, hoping to move to Vienna next year, but planning to come back to Italy to live. Igor, born in Poland, wants to write. Anna is studying agricultural science and wants to farm. The world moves in mysterious ways.
Falling asleep on their generosity, I am buoyed up with the munificence of the Lord and have more faith in humanity than I have had in months.

Pinaceae

In German a spruce is a Fichte. A pine is a Kiefer. A fir is a Tanne. Picea, Pinus, Abies. Larch, Tamarack, Lärche, Larix. The names are equals, equivalents, interchangeable. The trees too, have something in common with each other, though I am no forester to be able to detail what. I can barely understand leaf scars or budding patterns. The spruce cones dangle, those of the fir stand up, and pines have bunched needles. This is simple enough for me. But there is something else. Some personality that carries over, mixes in the various genus of these trees. Pines are harder, sparser, more ascetic in their numbers and their limbs. The spruces and the firs impersonate each other, needles sometimes sharp and sometimes soft, mostly dark, always thickly shielding the trunks from the world. The larches are careful but unyielding, dropping their needles, staying tall and straight and growing their clean firewood.

We have these names, words that translate. I can walk in the woods and use what I have learned of my forests to unlock these unfamiliar ones. The forests are full of trees, and they seem familiar while still new. The species are various. No lodgepoles in the Alps. A map tells me that the subalpine fir, grows only in the northern Rockies, the ponderosa as well. The range appears so small on the map, when I have known these trees all my life. I can hold in my mind twenty different ponderosas, all leaning at least a bit, strong and yellow in the Idaho sun. There is the one before the parking lot at the Grand Jean trailhead. It has seen me come and go five times or more, over more than as many years. It does not know me, but I it. On the banks of the Little Wieser there is a brace of trees that lean together first, then straighten and hold. They nod toward learning mathematical limits in high school, the joy of dropping calculus, and the scent of senior year asphalt in May, as we drove off the parking lot one last time. There are no ponderosas on the Nockspitz.

But then, there are no Latchen in the Sawtooths. Those seas of stunted hard green pines that grow shoulder high on the limestone massive of the East Alps. Their name is synonymous with a hard hike, with shadeless fatigue in the high summer sun. There are no Zirbel, whose sap and seeds are distilled into schnapps. The burning flavor of years in hot sun, tearing wind, and suffocating snow is strictly Alpine, and it is not pleasant for itself, but for the strength it carries from those trees.

And so I seek to translate, to explain what I know to others, but it stumbles on its size. A satisfying photo of a sequoia is impossible. Just so a doug fir or a Fichte, a Föhre or a Englemann Spruce cannot be known from its name. I can imply, I can point, I can speak of needles and cones and ranges—but the trees are still growing in soil, with their branches in the wind. I cannot give anyone more than a hopeful snatch of melody. The trees, in their names and forests and attitudes, yearn to be known orchestrally.

Costnix: A Translation

(Kostnix is a tiny “shop” not unlike a thrift store, except for the unusually easy question of price! I have gotten a tea pot, book ends, a guide to flora and fauna of the alps, and a candle stick from its friendly, dusty little room. I have a hat, a book, and a busted (but probably still rescue-able) computer to drop off. The only rule is no more than three things per day to be taken. Here is my translation of their flyer. It might be comically communist, but it is a noble effort to think harder about what worth means. Here it is, for your enjoyment.)

A free shop is a space from which everyone may take along any object that they could use. To be able to use the objects is the single requirement to be allowed to take them along. “Use” can also be meant aesthetically, of course. Neither money nor any other sort of payment is asked, that is to say there is no exchange in any form whatsoever.

Conversely, everyone can bring by anything that they no longer need, but which could conceivably be of use to someone else. Thereby the objects perhaps lose their monetary worth (price), but not their utility. This is an attempt to question the capitalistic “worth” system and the logic of the market—and to circumvent it in some small way. A free shop should work against the consumptive, throw away society and further a more conscious interaction with our resources. It should cause less production, less throwing away, and less toil. Namely, those who take something from the free shop save themselves the money they would have otherwise spent for the object, and therefore they have saved themselves and the producer a piece of capitalistic labor. The long term goal is to imagine a basically different form of living together, whose principles are not profit and exploitation, but solidarity and neighborliness. The free shop can also be a communication point, for example through discussions, lectures, theater, bicycle repair help, storytelling…

http://umsonstladen.lnxnt.org/innsbruck/index.php

Oberinntal

Carina and I met up with my student Kathrin and her sister Berna on the train platform. Both were looking a bit tired from the Farmer’s Union Ball the night before. That was actually were I had seen them last. But since a cowboy hat wasn’t quite the traditional clothing that was in that night, and the other 7,000 people all have cows, clothes, dancing and dialect in common, I had felt a bit of an outsider. I had left early, at two in the morning. Even though the girls were tired from getting home at six, they were happy to see us, and when the train from Vienna to Basel pulled up, we clambered in.

An hour later, Carina looked out the window, and asked “What is the name of this little creek?” Kathrin grinned, “The Inn!” I wouldn’t have guessed that either. This was no longer the powerful river in a wide, even Innsbruck bed. Instead, it was a stream perhaps ten meters wide, gracefully slipping around gravel corners. The pines were frosted with snow and hoarfrost down the north bank. The trained eased up to the Landeck station.

The loudspeaker broke in, “Passangers in first class, please be advised that the platform does not extend to your wagon, to disembark please continue through the resteraunt car to wagon 21.”

We grabbed our packs, and not having to worry about announcements for first class swung down to the poorman’s platform. At the station door a plain, dusty man, slouchy knit cap high on his head, greeted his daughters with a hug. He gave me his hand and told me his name was Stephan. His cheeks were pink from the cold, his eyes dark brown and amused. We got into the old car, and with a squeak from the handbrake, headed through town and up the valley. I asked if this was also the Inn, and he said it was. There wasn’t much water here because the rest was used for hydropower and first reentered the river at Imst. When he spoke in dialect to his daughters, neither Carina nor I could get more than the gist—but the words had the melodic pace of a patient life.

The mountains around this valley were abrupt, and formed a tight fence of peaks to the south. We pulled of the highway, and onto a more modest road. “Now we have to go up the mountain,” said Stephan. We drove through 4 switchbacks, the alpine sort you just don’t see in the States unless you are hiking. We drove through the little town of Fließ, where the Wolfs technically live. We kept going up, though more switchbacks, and up steep sections were the old motor strained, and the snow banks rose on the sides of the roads. We passed into a thick forest, black firs carrying heavy loads of white snow. We climbed up to a ridge, were an alpine hotel watched over the street signs to Imst. We took the other road, down a ridge. Several curves later, a sign announced “Puschlin.” The only thing behind the sign was a big blocky house and a barn. I held my breath; we slowed for the curve; we turned into the driveway. I am sure I was grinning uncontrollably.

I probably did a little dance getting out of the car. On the dark weathered wood of the barn wall were the “Staffel” that the cows had worn coming down from the high summer pasture. On the wall of the house the word “Gasthaus” had been painted over, “Alpenrose” remained. Walking through the front door, I was almost knocked over by the view. On the other side of the great vaulted entryway were floor to ceiling windows with a view of the whole valley. In the distance I could see glaciers on the highest peaks. There was one arm chair positioned just in front of the projecting alcove, and the thought of morning coffee and that view robbed me of language.

We were quickly ushered into the huge kitchen. There was a beautiful raw wood kitchen table, the planks smoothed and joined, but still retaining their pale hues. More windows looked out onto more views, which were being capped as it started to snow. Kathrin and Berna cooked us a hefty dinner of pasta and cabbage salad. Afterwards, we went for a walk down the road. One car passed as the sun washed the snow in coral alpenglow. The silence was clear and icy, being broken only by our tinkling footfalls. The snow fell gently, openly. It did not impede the view into the valley. As we walked back, the cold pressed down hard. Lenny the dog had run off, and Kathrin told me he was once gone for a week. I hoped he had the sense to head for home in this cold. The clouds were shredding off the hard blued sky, and one chip of planet burned brightly. The shadows turned dark blue, and the black trees were fading together in the distance. Everything hunched down for the cold open night on the mountain. Walking toward the house, I could see the shapes of the windows, the clear wheat yellow of the lights on the snow banks. It would be good to be inside, but I wished I had the thick fur of a wolf, to simply sit and look out across the deep heavens as this valley was turned their way.

When we got back inside, we decided to watch a film, “The Last Trapper.” It was a cheesy story about a modern day fur trapper near Dawson City in the Yukon. But the images were stunning. The winter, the landscape, the storms, the animals. Carina had loaned me a book he had written about taking his daughter to live in the same area. Kathrin was also a fan. Yet for some reason, few Americans read the books of Nicolas Varnier. At any rate, he has adventures. I also got to meet Matthias while watching the film. Kathrin’s little brother, six years old, had been to shy to come into the room for long during dinner. But now, with the distraction of a movie, he happily clambered up on Kathrin’s lap and proceeded to make various sounds in my direction. When I finally realized he was talking to me (mostly in unknown animal sounds), I made a few back, and whispered in German, “are you coming riding with us tomorrow?” He laughed. We continued to have minor disturbances throughout the film, with him finally snuggling down next to me until the movie was through.

Both the girls could barely keep their eyes open. I said goodnight to both of them and went into the room I had been given; there were lots of mostly empty rooms since the house was once a small hotel. I wrote down notes about the day, tried to read, but found myself too curious, too excited even to focus on a book, much less to sleep. Summoning my courage, I decided to go find Kathrin’s parents. I headed down stairs, and started poking my head into rooms, praying I didn’t wake anyone. I hoped sticking to the ground floor would be a safe bet. My pluck paid off. First I discovered a loom. Then, slowly opening another door, I surprised a slight dark-haired woman laying on a sofa, reading a book. She seemed a bit confused to see me, but introduced herself as Uli, Kathrin’s mother. She was suffering from a pinched nerve in her spine which caused significant pain in her foot, and had been laid up for the last three weeks. She was feeling better, but she said she had read quite a few books in the mean time. The sofa was actually an sort of bench, built right up next to a great wood burning oven. The room was filled with that glowing warmth that only comes from a wood fire.

I ended up talking to Uli, and later Stephan as well, until at least midnight. We talked about books, we talked about farming, we talked about getting started, we talked about politics (in the U.S. and in Austria), we talked about the Rhaeto-Romansch language and place names, we talked about the folk tales of the area, we talked about learning languages and dialects. I have rarely felt so at ease in German, so able to make jokes, so free to open myself. They gave me two magazines from the area full of history and recipes, and one book with a clever literary bent. I took them on the condition that I would bring something back here to them next time. I no longer had any doubt about a next time.



I woke up early the next day, still excited. Entering the kitchen, I found Kathrin’s brothers and Father. Her older brother, a year or two younger than me, served me coffee, and I asked him about living in Vienna, where he studies. He gave me the usual complaints, Vienna being a city, and therefore good to go out, not so great for the outdoors. He also graduated from the HBLA Kematen, and is now studying Cultural Technologies. This encompasses quite a bit of ground, but he is most interested in mountain engineering and avalanche planning. Only in Austria.

I had noticed before that all sorts of jars full of milk were standing around the table, and soon Stephan came in and began pouring them all into a wooden tub with metal bands. I couldn’t believe it. They were going to make butter. Matthias helped fill up the butter churn, and Stephan switched it on. After a few minutes, Stephan reached in and scooped out giant loafs of butter. By this time Kathrin had joined us, and got out the hand carved rolling pin used to imprint the butter with a blessing. After she handed me the little drum, Stephan told me to finish out the batch. I could have yodeled for joy, if only I could yodel.

Then came the riding. Once Carina had eaten (while she ate I played a rousing round of “War” with Matthias. I have never been so keen to cheat myself into losing, just to end the monotony), we headed out to ride.

To reach the barn, we walked to the basement. We went through a fruit cellar full of baskets of apples and a table of cabbage heads. The next room held the ripening milk from that morning, it was being made into yogurt and that uniquely European product “quark” (the milk for butter has to age over night, souring slightly and giving the butter more flavor). After that we came to a room with tack on the walls, grain sacks in the corners, and the smell of the animals. After trading our house shoes for boots, we entered the stall. The two horses were on the left side, their blond forelocks in their eyes. They looked at us curiously, and snuffled our palms as we said hello. Across the path down the middle were the cows. They were less interested in us, simply chewing their cuds or taking mouthfuls of feed from their mangers. In the corner was a tiny calf, born only a week before. He started away from my outstretched hand at first, but shyly tried to get some milk out of my fingers in the end, and put up with having his ears scratched.

“I came back from riding, and he was already half born. I helped with the rest, but the cow had done fine,” said Kathrin.

Carina had made friends with the young barn cat, still mostly kitten and obviously playful. After being let go, he surefootedly waltzed along the fence slats, past the horses and cows without a care.

Finally, we got down to brushing the horses. They were named Lossy and Bessy, as I understood it, and one was the mother of the other. Both were obviously work horses, Haflingers, broad backed and heavily muscled. Kathrin said they were used for work around the farm, as well as for pulling the logs her father liked to hunt down in the forest. As a hobby he logged a certain type of fir, searched for trees that grew on the north slopes, in the shade. The wood, when cured, could be used for violins and cellos.

It was decided that Carina would ride with the only saddle, I would be riding bareback. Outside I climbed up on the edge of a water trough, and Kathrin held the bridle. I lifted my leg over the back of animal and let my weight down. It was a strange feeling, nothing in front of my to grab, nothing to adjust. I was simply sitting on this big animal, holding some straps that were connected to its mouth. I summoned as much confidence as I could, and clicked my tongue. With a gentle rocking, we set off. I could feel the muscles of the horse tensing and releasing, as she could no doubt feel mine. I pulled on the reigns, sort of a test steering. She responded quickly, and I was instantly a bit more at ease. It seemed we understood each other.

As we walked down the road toward the trail that led up to the snow covered pastures, I looked around. The day was clear, blue skied and bright. I had to squint, my cowboy hat only shielding my eyes so much. I was glad not to have a saddle, as the horse’s warmth was keeping me quite comfortable. When my hands got cold, I simply rubbed the horses neck. I kept up a quite monologue to the horse, both in German and English, fairly sure that the voice would be enough.
We left the paved road, and headed up what seemed to be a cross-country skiing and hiking trail. Kathrin and Berna were walking, Carina and I out front on the horses. They had assured us that the horses were used to the snow, and even had the equine equivalent of snow tires. Their shoes had been attached with nails with special large heads: crampons for hooves.

The horses were well behaved, happy just to walk and take in the scenery, now and then nibbling a fir bough. Carina and I got father ahead, marveling at the winter forest all around us. We didn’t speak, except to the horses, mostly “shhh” and clucking. The rhythm of the walking horse was physical, calming. I felt as if I were inside a piece of music, not just acoustic but in every sense at once. The repetitious trees, the pace, the ridges swooping in unison—it all converged, all sustained into indescribable symphonic swoop.

We saw a barn in the distance, up after a long straight away. We had trotted the horses a few times, but I found without stirrups the jolting was a bit uncomfortable. Carina was in the lead now, and her horse began to trot. She had the saddle, and didn’t mind. I pulled gently on the reins and shhhhed. I didn’t really want to bounce. I don’t know if I set off what happened next or not, but suddenly I found myself in not a trot, but the first lunge of a full gallop. In that first lunge, I slipped to the right, and now was beyond rescue. I tried to haul on the reins, but to no avail with my weight so uneven. I realized it was time to bail, and landed to the side of the horse on my feet. I still had the reins as I came down, and had momentary visions of stopping the horse short, grabbing the bridle and calming her down. But the reins popped open, and I was left standing in the road, watching the powerful haunches of the horse propel it off toward the barn, probably 300 yards off. As my horse streaked past Carina at full tilt, she brought her to a walk. I was jealous. I was even riding the old horse. Berna and Kathrin walked up behind me beaming.

“I should have warned you,” she said, “we always gallop them here.” I was a bit comforted by that. Next time, I would be ready for galloping without saddle.
My horse was waiting for us quietly at the barn, and Carina took her by the bridle and stroked her as we walked up. But the horse didn’t even seem worked up, just happy after a run. Kathrin took the bridles off and let the horses wander as we enjoyed the view. She even jumped up on Lossy without saddle, or reins, or bridle. She just sat on the broad back and scratched her horses neck, and happily reprimanded her.

Carina and I felt more at ease, though a bit fatigued on the ride back. I found the muscles of my legs and back aren’t ready for extended riding. I came up with schemes while watching the snow shower off the trees of how I could ride everyday. Summer jobs? Savings?

When we returned to the house, Matthias was already eager to get on the road. It was Fasnacht in Imst, and he loved Fasnacht. Packing up and leaving, I was sorry that I had only been here one night, and only been able to have one conversation with these amazing folks. They weren’t so different. Stephan and Uli hadn’t grown up on farms. They had been town kids, had dreamed of becoming self sufficient. They had rented a mountain farm for seven years, then a valley farm for another seven, laboring like Jacob for their dreams. Along the route they had acquired cows, found a place to buy outright with loans and help from their parents, and now had a more traditional farm than they had once imagined. But they seemed to love their lives here, with their family, so far up the mountain. I couldn’t blame them.