07 August 2011

D-72762 RT

It's about this time of year that I have the greatest nostalgia for the 3 years the family and I lived in Reutlingen, Germany: afternoons at the Markwasen Freibad, runs through the woods that brought up Reutlingen's border with Pfullingen, picking Zwetschgen right off the neighborhood trees, renting boats on the Neckar in Tübingen, hikes up to the Uracher Wasserfall...  One August we went to Nesselwang for a weekend, rode the Sommerrodelbahn all day long, chilled in the ABC (Alpspitz-Bade-Center) in the evening. There's no getting around the fact that life moved at a very different pace then.

Sometimes I think about signing on for another two years there.  With the kids grown, it would just be me.  I imagine open expanses of time to sit, to go for walks and hikes, to sit some more.  I could do some writing, maybe, or take up a new avocation.  Last time I was there I took some courses at the Forestry School in Rottenburg; who knows what I might do this time?  I could go to Berlin or Sweden for sesshin, even. I'm sure I could twist the kids' arms into coming for skiing over Christmas.

And then I come back to my senses.

Just this.  Right here.  Right now.

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