Mindfulness and ruptures (51.255445 | 8.559937)
I feel as if I am entering a sculpture exhibition. A thick green carpet stretches out in front of me, interrupted by a path that leads from exhibit to exhibit, one more unusual than the next. Here a proud pyramid. An ostrich there. A lady-in-waiting with highly tousled hair joins a dancing skeleton. But no artist has peeled these sculptures out of the wood, they have simply grown like this. Disheveled pines, junipers bent by the wind, all solitary trees, presented to the hiker on a carpet of heather, green in summer, purple in late autumn. They belong to a gallery of nature at a high level: at 800 meters above sea level lies the Hochheide near Niedersfeld. With an area of 74 hectares, it is one of the largest European mountain heaths, a rare type of landscape.
Until the Middle Ages, hilltops like this one were covered in dense mixed forests. Large areas of forest were cleared in the Sauerland for charcoal production. The tall trees were followed by dwarf shrubs, especially heather. In our time, the trees began to reclaim their original area. But people decided that they found Heid more beautiful and called it nature conservation. The last mighty trunks were felled to prevent them from sprouting new growth. Since then, seedlings have been removed, and once a year a small herd of heather sheep crosses the plateau to keep the vegetation low.
Is that nature? Is this culture? Is it divine art? In any case, the well-tended high plateau provides the ideal backdrop for the Goldener Pfad, which was inaugurated in 2015. Its designer, psychologist Reinhard Schober, sends hikers through 'atmosphere baths'. At ten stations, I am invited to take in the surroundings with all my senses. Listen to the concert of nature at a clef sculpture, focus your eyes on infinity on the 'landscape balcony', ponder a sentence by Franz Kafka on a blackboard: 'There is a goal, but no way. What we call a path is hesitation. If I pause again and again, get involved in the exercises, walking becomes a lesson in 'letting the soul stroll'.
For five kilometers, the path leads me in wide curves over the heather carpet. Its highest point is also my personal highlight, the 837-metre-high Clemensberg. On the summit, as it should be, with a cross and summit book. I am standing on an extinct volcano, the interior of which consists of hard diabase rock. From up here, I can see a landscape that is both rural and lovely and at the same time full of fractures. Meadows, fields, woodland and hedgerows surround small villages and hamlets. But just below the Clemensberg, a diabase quarry is digging into the earth and I look down on smooth, deep cuts and bare rock. A wound in the green skin. I don't know whether the pathfinders were aware of the effect of this summit view. It set many thoughts in motion in me: about fractures and contradictions, not only in the landscape, but also in my own life. About wounds that are still open and those that have already healed. And about the wonderful human ability to unite opposites and create something completely new from them. Something comes together in me after the rollercoaster ride of the Goldener Pfad. It feels round and joyful.
Author: Michael Gleich
Sun makes the path happy,
bathes Heid, grasses, shrubs
in golden evening light.
Sculptures of trees, wind-grown,
show contours.
Your thoughts fly away,
pause - just be there - breathe.
Warm, spicy, fine air,
the wind gently caresses your face,
the soft, final buzzing of insects
birdsong from afar
Gold for your soul
Marlies Strübbe-Tewes
Michael Gleich