Walking and writing on small scales

This morning I went walking in the forest near Dilsberg (in southern Germany, where I’m staying on a three-month writers residency). Most of the trees in this forest are oak and beech trees, which makes it feel very different to those at home in Scotland. And walking through this forest I’m noticing very small scale changes, sometimes I can see wide vistas across the valleys to neighbouring hills, other times I can only see a few metres in front of you. Some of the paths are wide and muddy tracks made by logging vehicles, others are steep and narrow. The air temperature changes rapidly as I climb hills, and this means that snow exists in some places, even though it’s melted in other places. Snow patches are often only a few metres across, and right next to them the earth might be warm from the sun.

The ostensible aim of my morning’s walk was to find a stone marked on the map as the ‘Tillystein’, because Commander Tilly (leader of the Catholic Counter-reformation forces) was based here during the Thirty Years War. (He actually stayed in the house where I’m a writer-in-residence, which is why it’s known as the Kommandantenhaus.) But I walk right past the stone before doubling back and realising. It’s a huge outcrop of stone with the word ‘Tillystein’ neatly chiselled on one side.

My walks seem to need an apparent aim to them, no matter how unconnected from my writing those aims are (I know almost nothing about Commander Tilly or his stone, apart from the fact he’s mentioned in Brecht’s ‘Mother Courage’), each morning I plan a walk by studying a map while I eat my breakfast.

The Kommandantenhaus itself is large and because it’s right on top of the hill, it can be seen from some distance. (I suppose that’s ideal for spotting your enemies if you are a commander.) Interestingly, it interrupts the wall that otherwise encircles the entire village. That feels a bit like a metaphor for my presence as an outsider, to create something that causes a slight disruption, although I’m not sure how public this disruption is going to be.

The small-scale nature of the changes in the forest appeal to me.  They’re invisible on Google Earth which has a spatial resolution of around 15 metres, and can only show the tops of the trees which look worryingly like some sort of giant broccoli-like vegetable on the screen. There is a truth to the forest that can only be encountered directly and not via the screen. To me, it feels the importance of getting to know small patches of land is the same as the importance of telling individual stories. Small scales are required for the sake of precision, both in walking and writing.

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