True magic
Is there something like true love? And how is the difference between true and untrue love defined? Or is it just wishful thinking that a true love defies any inconvenience, any odds, any boredom or routine and all the temptations in the world? Or is it the enchantment of a first encounter attached to a special situation by its protagonists, trying to keep it up by all means?
And how about true art? “True art always inheres a bit of witchcraft”, a bonmot claims accredited to the Danish writer Tania Blixen – also know from the movie “Out of Africa”. Is that the art of the Harz mountains, the closeness to the Brocken witches that meet once a year on Walpurgis night and thus impose their magic annually onto the Harz?
And how about true magic than? What witchcraft is inherent? True love, true art and true magic is in the eye of the beholder and happens in a fleeting moment which has to be recognized in the first place and then preserved. The secret is to be well aware of this moment and to keep it alive in pictures, thoughts, memories, smells and sounds such as the chirrups of birds, the sound of a lawn-mover or the smell of a barbecue.
The connecting element is the magic, the magic which is allocated to this instant and let it evolve because one wants to or believes in it.
I experience such magic moments at this time upon hiking in the Harz mountains. As a passionate collector of stamps I get around. And as the weather is truly kind to us this year I experienced already special moments at the Köthener Hütte, at the panoramic view of Falkenstein, at the coal mining nature trail of Wettelrode and last but not least yesterday at the Stierbergsteich and at the hotel Harzhaus in Benneckenstein with a view to some deers.
There is nothing else than the rustling wind, swaying trees, twittering birds, wonderful meadows and pleasant silence, oh, well and even more important: nice fellows!
Clean air instead of city smog, pollywog invasion instead of pigeon shit, goat alarm instead of shopping madness, witchcraft instead of urban jungle. For me that is the true magic. May the hiking god be with us.