Outside it was so cold I could see my breath, with frost on the grass and all the trees looking shriveled. I waited until just before sunrise to climb the Himmelsleiter and that made the steep hillsides look pink-gold. Evenly spaced rows and columns of grape vines and stone steps. The day’s first church bells started at 0700 and the birds seemed to start then too, like they were calling back to the bells. The river rushing, the cold, but no traffic because today’s a holiday in Germany. My work colleagues tried to say as much on email but noted they’d still be checking their phones. Our capitalism crept into theirs.

The Himmelsleiter goes up a less steep part of the slopes to a saddle with an overlook. It’s nested in the crook of two hills, an almost-valley and perfect place for a ladder of sorts. They built little stone ledges in rows to keep the grape vines intact and maybe prevent the hillside from sloughing off in the rains. Or perhaps for those tending the vines to keep their footing, it’s so steep. The skies are streaked in pink and reflected back in the pale gold river, the rushing sound soft by the bridge. Roosters crowing in backyards, more frost, the rooster’s crows sound stuck in its throat. An old lady with a babuska and watering can. Fall is the most beautiful time. Someone spray-painted the word ASS on a column by the bridge, then “system change not climate change,” in English. The color of the rock on the hillsides is tan, must be sandstone, looks prehistoric.

Had deer leg for the first and possibly the last time at the butcher’s restaurant, the Metzgerei. Dry and unseasoned, though the Preiselbeere helped. Had to gag it down. Backed it with the cheese Spätzle, pasta basically. (Germans capitalize all their nouns.)

When the train goes by it’s not a warm sound or romantic, but unsettling. Like time itself it moves too fast, guts you with one deep thrust. I can still take the stone steps two at a time though I have to stop more. Wondering would I come here as an old man with my grandkids, and funny that. The stones are all the same, the view of the village from behind too. Morning fog, spired towers.

At the top of the Himmelsleiter off the saddle there’s a little shelter built into the side of one of the short stone walls big enough for one or two people to sit, a photo of me from Christmas Day posing by that same spot many years ago in just a T-shirt it was so warm.

The vines are held upright by stakes and wiring in even increments, their leaves gone yellow-brown around the edges. The Germans will prune them when it’s time and save the clippings for kindling. Soon they’ll be baking the onion cake in the old stone bake houses, the Zwiebelkuchen, and the sweet smell of that kindling smoke is like no other.

Driving across Germany and France it looks just like Pennsylvania. The freeways are the same, the distant hills and farms, the trees just starting to turn. Realizing this the first time I drove across France from top to bottom starting in London, taking the Chunnel beneath the English Channel, driving with my stepdad John’s gay friends Rob and Paul, their VW camper and two Bassets. And today it’s no different though this time it’s fall.

Trying to get mom’s car stereo to work, there’s a CD that won’t eject but it’s Nick Drake, the same CD I had in there the last time we drove to France in late January so I play it again and it’s perfect. I tell mom it’s the same CD John would have bought when they moved into that house in Port-Vendres. I remembered John first playing it for me when Dawn and I came for Easter (Rob and Paul were there too, Rob did the lamb). There’s an odd tic the stereo makes that must be loose wiring in the speakers and sounds like a crackle and pop, like a record.

Kissing men on the cheeks the way the French do. That starts right away and I realize I’m not prepared for it. First Laurent, a big guy with a beard, then his daughter Romane’s partner Thomas, a plain clothes cop who works undercover assignments and wears his hair long like mine, also bearded: we kiss on both sides too, then the friends who own the neighborhood bar, it’s all so civilized. A table for six in the middle of the bar with food and drink for hours. Waking in the middle of the night realizing I had another dream about drinking, not surprising. One of those recovery dreams where you either relapse or you’re tempted to and another version of you has to decide. In all the dreams of the past couple years I prevail. There is no conflict, only remorse.

Categories: Addiction, Creative Nonfiction, Travelogues

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, prose