Adorfer Klippen

Diemelsee-Adorf (51.374230 | 8.812449)

The inner child

Former open-cast ironstone mine and important geological outcrop.

I crept up barefoot. Not a sound. Just don't step on a branch that might crack and give me away. It's already dawn. I lie in wait behind a small hill. Grass and moss, a soft stalk. I have the two entrances to the roof castle firmly in view. Will the secret digger with the black and white fur show himself tonight? There's a cornfield nearby with crunchy cobs that he likes to gnaw on. Let's see. The longer I lie and lurk, the more the scenery of the "Red Cliffs", a natural monument near Adorf, becomes blurred. Images of my childhood are pushed over it. The huge boulders of ironstone, 350 million years old, become the walls of a canyon. The burial holes, left over from medieval mining, are transformed into hiding places for the Indians from the advancing cavalry. The dense ring of wild roses that frames the red stones in green provides my tribe with protection from intruders.

I am Brown Bear and I am to become the successor to my father Great Eagle. One day a wise chieftain, I hope. Father passes on all his Wissen to me. About the earth that feeds us, about the plants that grow in our home near the Red Cliffs, about our neighbors, the animals. The badger, he explained to me as we lurked at the Badger Castle, is not a pure herbivore. He prefers to eat earthworms. We leave the stalking post for a while and walk through the basin surrounded by rocks and thorn bushes. Our tribe has felt protected and safe in this place for generations. Small campfires burn in front of the tipis. Lots of flame, little smoke, so as not to be seen from afar. That's how we learned it.

A fist-sized red stone lies in front of us. Phew, it's heavy! That's because it's more than half iron, says Dad. On the slope, where sun, rain and frost have been carving the rocks like a carving knife for thousands of years, we look for fossils in the scree. Look closely! I actually find animal tracks, ancient, fossilized. Cephalopods and corals, three-lobed crabs and sea lilies.

Father explains that there was a sea here in prehistoric times. I can't even imagine. Yes, it was. There were huge fire-breathing monsters in the sea that melted rocks and spat them up into the sky in liquid form. These were the volcanoes. They are the reason why our country is richly blessed with iron. It lies in layers right up to the surface of the earth. This is almost nowhere else. Our ancestors didn't even have to dig shafts to get to it. All they had to do was dig deep into the ground and they came across the red iron stones.

A few meters further on, we discover a butterfly that is miraculously pale blue in colour. That's a pretty tricky one, my father tempts me. I'm intrigued: Why - it lays its eggs right in front of anthills. And the ants carry them to their nest. The eggs then grow into larvae; they can imitate the ants' smell perfectly so that they are fed and cared for by them. - Just like the cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of other birds? - Exactly - as we walk on, Big Eagle points to plants and tells me the stories about them. This purple one is called musk mallow, it doesn't just look good, you can also eat it. There, wild thyme, also a tasty herb. The one with the yellow petals is called ragwort, if cattle eat a lot of it, they die of a broken liver, just like people who drink too much firewater. Another is called round-leaved bellflower, but at first glance it doesn't have round leaves at all. When I take a closer look, they are narrow and pointed at the top, but round at the bottom.

Looking, however, becomes increasingly difficult. It is almost dark. The fires in front of the tipis have gone out. The scenery of Indian country is fading. I rub my eyes. I am still lying in the soft grass opposite the roof castle. Nothing stirs at the two football-sized holes. Somewhere in the corridors behind them, buried a few meters deep in the ground, the lord of the castle is hiding. When I can barely make out anything, I leave the observation point. I'm not a bit disappointed. I haven't seen a badger, but have discovered that there is still a little boy in me, with a vivid imagination, always ready to stalk and play and explore. The Red Cliffs are a good place to let your inner child run wild.