My second first time

The nights were still around freezing point and Johanna asked for some more time to think. So we came to the decision that I would go off on my own for the time being. This day was difficult, or rather everything felt quite bipolar. At the same moment I felt good because it was finally starting and bad because Johanna stayed at home. Happy, because I started to realize my dream, unhappy, because I might put our marriage at risk. I felt good and bad, brave and cowardly at the same time.

Johanna drove me to Rißdorf, to the place where we decided to pause. The farewell was short and painful. On that day, my thoughts blocked my vision. My eyes registered that everything was as I wished. The rolling hills of the Eifel with their fields and forests reminded me of the Shire and also the weather was sunny during the day, around 20 degrees. Villages like Holzheim, Harzheim, Eiserfey and Vollem were on the way. People greeted kindly with questioning looks and some also asked. Nice conversations ensued and I got a sense of what it might be like on the road. But that day I perceived everything through this noisy haze of brokenness.

For the first two days I had arranged the tours and so I reached the area, where I started looking for a place to sleep, as planned. It was exciting, like a good detective story. On a forest road, I unbuckled the car, climbed up an embankment and checked the conditions. Considered good and back on the trail, I looked around to make sure no one was around to see me. Then I heaved the car with the luggage up the embankment and dragged it a few more meters into the forest. The night camp I erected on a cuddly soft moss bed. I ate something else and it was already getting dark. In the tent a few more phone calls, some heavy thoughts and then came the realizations of the first day. My muscles were burning and I was very thirsty, so the hills of the Eifel were not sooo gentle and even under a cuddly soft moss bed can hide hard, gnarly roots.

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