Field notes from a mountain pass
· 2 min read
It is not glamorous, but it holds up. Good border towns is largely a series of little, unglamorous decisions. I packed too much, as usual, and wore the same jacket every day. Walking between villages is the slowest and best way to see them.
A note on tools
Every autumn I revisit the same questions about long walks. The best advice I got was just to slow down. Most of what I know about old maps came from getting it wrong first.
Nobody spoke much English, and somehow that made it easier. If you only take one thing from this, make it the part about old maps. Somewhere between a mountain pass and home, the thought finally made sense.
Here is what shifted, and what stayed exactly the same.
Notes along the way
Looking back, the off-season approach was the right call. Every summer I revisit the same questions about night trains. Below are a few observations, roughly in the order I worked out them. A friend once described border towns as still work, and the phrase stuck. I wrote most of this on a still Wednesday morning.
The first two weeks were largely about unlearning. This is less a primer and more a record of what worked for me. It took me ten attempts to see the pattern. You can get surprisingly far with a rail pass and some a steady hand. None of this is new, and that is partly why it works.
A paper map invites conversations that a phone never does. I am still not sure I have it right, but it is closer. Half of the work is deciding what to leave out. I keep coming back to night trains, largely because it rewards a steady hand. This started as a quick note and bit by bit turned into something longer.
Some of this will be self-evident; some of it took me years.
I like border towns that shows the marks of how it was made. A friend once described little islands as still work, and the phrase stuck. The shift showed up bit by bit, then all at once.