An Early Autumn Outing at a Forested Riverside

The last few posts are not cheerful. I've realized retrospectively that there are a few more things that have made me uneasy lately (the cooling of the construction industry that my youngest brother is in, flights of military jets over my neighbourhood, ...) that I forgot to mention...

But, on the bright side: the smaller company I used to work for before it was bought in 2021 is likely going to be reestablished. It's impossible to feel truly happy if one always has this consciousness that, even if I myself escaped our Employer Overseas by quitting, a lot of my friends are still metaphorically straining under the whip and yoke of the workplace every single day while I frolic. It's also difficult to feel truly happy if suddenly they're all unemployed and thrown upon the mercies of Berlin employers (good and bad). But now that a new set of opportunities is arising, the constant ache and grief of the past few months is healing rapidly.

***

At around noon I met with two former colleagues and godfather M. to traipse around the walking and hiking paths near the Nikolassee and the Havel, at the western edge of Berlin.

On the way, acorns were firing like little bullets from beneath my bicycle wheels, patterned with their graceful curving leaves in the forest floor once I was walking in the forest itself. Elm or beech leaves, and maple leaves, in yellows and reds, were also spreading and peaking on the ground. Brown squelched horse chestnut hulls carpeted some of the bicycle paths, their shining dark brown fruits spilled here and there, or crushed to green powder underneath car tires.

And the tree canopies were mostly still intact, curving over the sidewalks and streets and forest paths, piled as copiously as the vast and quickly-changing clouds (white or grey) in the sky. Often splashes of sunlight streamed across the paths, often splashes caught in the upper leafy branches. And although a few dead trees seemed to testify to losses from summer droughts, and many twigs and branches had been shaken to the forest floor by gusts of wind, the overall impression was: green.

The weather was so good for boating that the loud sputtering of the many sails was audible from the shore — louder even than a fire-engine-red speedboat — the grey surface was choppy, and foaming white wakes trailed from the sterns.

There was an elaborate set-up of hiking paths, information panels (also at an 1840s stone memorial with the same Gothic nubs you might see on a church spire, that had been refurbished in 1945 and commemorated a legend, overlooking the lake), bus stops, benches, etc. for humans. And black sheeting to help keep frogs from meeting a swift and smashing demise by hopping onto a semi-busy road beside the shore. But not so many other people that one constantly felt accompanied.

A group of swans was putting in a 'pit stop' on a grey sand shore. A raven flew overhead, I think, when we paused on a bench (to eat pastries and rest) overlooking an idyllic riverside copse; it made its echoing clicking calls, while dragonflies hovered over a horizontal tree trunk. And a few crows I especially noticed at the beginning. There must have been a red squirrel or two, but I didn't fully pay attention. There were, relievingly, no frog or mouse corpses glued to the roads as I'd seen elsewhere in and around Berlin. And although a few tree roots looked a bit blackened or even charred, it didn't seem as if there'd been many losses due to lightning strikes over the summer.

And although I felt too much like I needed to conserve energy to speak much with the other hikers, at least I listened to the conversations. It was a lovely outing.