This is a different kind of spring for me. Just think about it. I'm in the mountains! I've never seen this before. Two weeks ago we were still trudging beneath cold and unforgiving skies. Finally, after months of natural torture, we hit the 20 degree Celsius mark and stayed there. Within two days buds made themselves known, within a week trees were playing home to yellow, white, and green revolutions, and after two weeks the brightest green has combed up the roots of mountains, up and over all but the highest. The giants are still doing their best to shake the remaining snow dandruff, and with the help of foehn it looks like they'll have managed the feat pretty soon here.
After a week of nice weather, the Faulesaupartie (the group of "lazy" mountain bikers I described in an earlier entry) was ready to begin the season. Before I get to that, though, I have to describe how the group has gotten to know me. I met them all at the beginning, at the Almabtrieb that I described in one of my first entries, and I've encountered them on a couple of other instances, but they probably got their biggest impression of me a week before our first ride. I joined them for a late afternoon game of indoor soccer. Keep in mind, all of these men are above 50. I was half the age of all of the men there. I did my best to keep up, and I managed pretty well. After playing for about 50 minutes or so I ran for the ball at the wall. Reaching it at a pretty high speed, I put out my hands to catch myself from crashing into the wall. Unknown to my eye's corner, the wall was only too eager for contact. Protruding from a crack in the wall, feigning the purpose of supporting some structure and smirking evil intentions, a small hook-like thing stabbed the middle of my right palm. I stopped immediately and looked at it. "Es gibt ein Loch in meiner Hand," (there's a hole in my hand) I said calmly. It was tiny, and it was probably only a couple of mm deep, but it was the first artificial hole I'd ever seen in my own body. Well, the problem is, I'm squeamish; in the least manly kind of way. I immediately assumed mental control. "No problem, Dan. Small hole! Little blood. It doesn't even hurt that bad. It's nothing!" Two minutes later I was sitting against the wall, pale-faced and barely conscious as James and one of the others opened the First Aid kit and wrapped my hand with enough gauze to stop a major artery from bleeding out. Five minutes later I was laying on the tile floor in cold sweats because I couldn't stand or sit. After feeling better, I went home to shower before meeting up with them for a beer. James came by and rang my doorbell twice to make sure I hadn't passed out. Point is: the 23 year old almost fainted from a prick to the hand in front of a bunch of fit "old men."
When I arrived at the meeting point for our ride a week later, I was greeted with, "Stop! Hand check!" I think it's going to take me the next month of riding to earn any kind of manliness back. Meanwhile, I spent the last two weeks doing my best to do just that. It really is remarkable how much of a joke age can be. James and I seem to normally take about the third position in the pack, and we work pretty hard to get there. As we made our long and slow ascent up a mountain, breathing louder than the wind and hearts churning faster than our chains, one of the older guys in the group shot past me nearly knocking me over to get to his rightful place. After squirreling our way up, down, and around a few mountains, we flew down into the valley of Bad Goisern to one of the men's huts. We arrived about two hours before the sunset, hung up our sweat-drenched shirts to dry, and sat on the porch to face the setting sun. Over 1.5 hours, I was handed three beers and told that I just had to try the local Schnapps, which I obliged. I have to assert that this is the best part. The men in the group talk about this as the "reward." They bust their bodies riding up and down the mountains, and then they reward it with a few beers. A cold beer never tastes better than then. I had to turn down a few other drinks. Biking isn't the only challenge to endurance these "older" guys have me beat at. As the sun threatened its departure, we strapped on helmets and jackets and raced it home.
Austrians seem to have a completely different way of thinking about health. As soon as they get a "break" or "holiday", many of them rush to the nearest mountain or to their bike to get their body moving. What many of us would think of as "work" in doing something athletic seems to be the opposite to an Austrian. The healthiest people I know seem to be "older" people who go to the extreme on everything. Work hard. Play hard. They really are healthier, too, and the way they eat and drink is an integral part of that. They nurture their bodies and souls throughout the entire event. Sport becomes this celebration of movement, eating the celebration of life, and drinking a celebration of company. It's a great big dance.
Today held so many surprises. There were guest singers in church today. I've been visiting the catholic mass in the town cathedral. I heard some of the most beautiful harmonies in years in renditions of "kyrie, eleison" and the like. Afterward, I watched a FANTASTIC episode of "Die Sendung mit der Maus" (the show with the mouse). They showed how a 3D printer works (my new favorite obsession), how aluminum sheets are made, and Shawn the Sheep (from the makers of Wallace and Gromit) and his fellow herd-mates ventured into the city to get pizza in one of the best episodes yet. A couple of hours later I decided to try and find a smaller mountain I hadn't been up yet. I took my bike and rode to the nearest ones I knew of. On the way, I noticed a small sign for a waterfall. I followed the trail and found it, small but perfect, at the base of the mountain foothills. As soon as I got there, three kids raced past me with a friendly "Grias di!", stripped to their shorts, and waded into the ice-cold pool beneath the waterfall.
After trying a few dead ends, I realized I'd probably be blazing a new trail up either of the two small mountains I'd found. Resigned to my fate, I rode my bike as far up a road as I could. When the path got to difficult to ride, I hid my bike, locked it, and went up by foot. When the trail suddenly stopped, I followed a spring bed toward what looked like a peak. Sinking inches into the mud from melted snow, and tripping over vines and roots I fought toward the top. I got to a rock wall, and decided it looked climbable. I promised myself, "Dan, you're alone, nobody knows you're here, and you don't have any of the right equipment with you. If it looks iffy, don't try for it." Before I knew it, I was sweating bullets and praying to God to help me get down the constantly shifting wall. I swear, no rock I grabbed would stay put. I admitted defeat and inched down the wall calling myself an idiot. Once down, I kissed the ground, thanked the heavens, and went a responsible route. Turns out the rocks were so loose was because I was climbing up the depository side of a hollowed out mountaintop, or quarry.
On my way up the mountain, the helmet attached to my bag had somehow wiggled loose unbeknownst to me, so on the way down I tracked my steps. With eyes freshly peeled I surveyed the landscape while descending, when suddenly I noticed an oddity. Low to my right was a hollow stump, and standing from the stump was a thick limb with a crown of broken twigs. It looked planted. As I got nearer I saw what looked like a typical improvised rock marker on the stump in front of the limb. I pulled out the limb to see if there was something underneath, thinking someone might have hid something there (ever heard of geocaching?), but I found nothing. I crouched and noticed something yet more mysterious. Someone had carved a very straight square into the side of the stump beneath the stone marker. Sitting on the floor of the square was a large stone. I removed the larger stone and found one smaller, but alien. It was an odd red, almost see-through in some places, suspiciously round and smooth. Maybe it is hardened sap (amber? copal?), I thought. Something about it made me scared. I was stealing someone's treasure, and I knew it.
Finders keepers, right? Just because you hid it and marked its location doesn't make it yours, right? I felt like I was stealing some other pirates treasure. The wind whispered warnings, and a darkness seeped up from the ground and set a shadow on my sunny surroundings. I started looking over my back, sure that the treasure's keeper was bound to it by the mountain's magic. Would I crack this stone to find a secret? What was this thing I was holding? I realized where I was. I had just left a death bed. I had just skirted the edges of a hollowed out mountain. I'd scaled a dead mountain, and somebody, either its murderer or its protector had found and hidden, maybe buried its heart. Ditching the comfort of security, I zipped the mountain's heart in my bag. Fearing the mountain's keeper, I quickly left, but not before I noticed striking colors not ten feet from the grave. Cradled in the roots of a small tree stemmed one of the more beautiful flowers I've ever seen. There was only one, and I never saw another nearby or far from thereafter. I ran downhill, fighting the mountain as it tried to trip and tie me down. Thorns on vines and lying limbs grabbed at my feet, and I kicked them off. Seeing my helmet, I snatched it and ran further to my bike to race home. I do believe I'll keep the mountain's heart. Maybe the mountain's keeper will come to find me. I don't know what to fear, so I won't.
It's so much easier to walk the beaten path, and it might be that it's ultimately wiser. What did I gain today? Scratches on my legs and a couple years off my life from fear of falling to my death, and I found a cool looking rock. That, or I stole a treasure. I stole the mountain's heart, and its keeper must be as mighty as the mountain.
