Hex stones and hyper-vigilance
A wayside tribune on a woodland path in South Tyrol.
It's warmer this morning. Snow is thawing on distant mountaintops. I keep my eyes closed for a moment and in the stillness of the incredibly soundproofed hotel room, I imagine I can hear the soft cracks and hisses of sheets of white shifting and melting down steep rock slopes.
My heavy head this morning is the combination of a really tasty Riesling and the changing altitudes testing my sinuses.
We’re walking to another nearby town today, the sun is painfully bright and everything shines, even things that shouldn’t.
Ambling down the steep main road a man hurries towards us with a crooked wooden stick and a green felt hat. As he moves closer we see he’s cradling a goat skull and a collection of alpine herbs arranged exquisitely in his gnarled hands.
He lets me photograph him and speaks to us hurriedly first in Italian, then German. I can’t pick up much, he’s perhaps heading to a fair or an event in the next town over? His hands shake as they grip the assortment of natural oddities, but he walks away confident he's imparted his urgent message. I still wish I knew what it was.
Wild alpine roses grow through cracks in rocks
Starting at my feet, following a trail is where I feel most at home.
A meadow filled with the sound of bells, we meet two highland cows, Samantha and Linda according to the hastily scribbled tags on their ears. Unwavering gazes, dark grey tongues. Long lashes flicking away the flies.
A mountain woodpecker, slick black with a yellow bill and a brilliant flash of red on his head. Then I’m looking back at my feet again as white five-pointed flowers litter the forest floor like fallen stars.
We come across something called the hex stone. A witches’ meeting place where a Christian priest was once unfortunate enough to stumble into one of their gatherings and was stripped of his clothes and beaten to death. The stone is about the size of our bathroom with a sort of hollow space at the top and a gap at the back in which to climb into the hollow. I climbed inside and closed my eyes trying to turn back hundreds of years of time to one of those meetings. When I opened them the pale face of a small boy was looking up at me through a gap in the rock and I gave a small yelp in shock then laughed nervously and said hello. He says hello back looking equally stunned to see me there.
A lizard moves like a stop motion animation across the surface of the rock, first one side then the other, then lifting his front arm to do a small wave. Over and over.
So much noticing, and the kind of noticing that only occurs when you stop waiting for something to happen. When your vigilance is steered away from your inner world small details reveal themselves. Worlds within worlds.
We climb into a dried up river bed, the rocks and wood have all been bleached white like the surface of the moon. Life and love. A small argument. Walking in stony silence.
Then forgetting we were meant to be walking in silence.
A donkey in the shade outside a farm house.
A hut on a lake with serene reflections.
