My usual half-hour leg-stretcher around the other half of Faulensee is pleasant enough, but it’s beginning to be time to start going up gradually bigger hills. I want to be ready for spring, when it’ll be time to make a much earlier start on longer-distance walking and—when the weather allows, in summer—to get onto the proper mountains again. Winter is a slack time for me, especially when the weather hasn’t delivered and when the snow on the higher walking paths has rarely been sufficiently firm to entice my boots.
I decided last Thursday to change direction on my way past Faulensee church and instead of heading along the relatively flat route of weeks past, I headed up the steeper road towards Bürg hill instead. The bench on the edge of the woods beckoned me at mid-afternoon after I dropped what I was doing in the office, and although the road winds between the houses over there to make it easier for cars, the incline was enough to give my restless legs a lightly challenging 20 minutes from home.
While I pondered the world from on high, the sun was sinking behind the surrounding mountains and the light slipped gradually; first from the village on the lake shore, then on the wooded slopes leading up to Aeschi, and then, finally, as I was passing on my home, from the very last pinnacle of the church spire.
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