The Föhn Wind

Los Angeles has its Santa Ana winds, Salzburg has the Föhn. These dry, warm winds, an effect of rain clouds massing at the tops of the Alps and forcing dry air down the far side, are credited with creating tension, even psychosis, just as the Santa Ana winds are in Southern California.

I can’t say that yesterday’s Föhn winds had an unsettling effect on me. It was a clear day, cold in fact. The sharp winds had that chill razor edge that Angelinos also recognise when the Santa Anas blow in winter. Here, they whipped the two loads of laundry on the line dry in a matter of a couple of hours, tossing towels and shirts backwards so they lay outstretched on the spinner. Leaves blown sideways tapped sharply on the windows; sycamore pods spun overhead like helicopters. Birds struggled from tree to bush.

The winds vigorously ruffled the surface of the fishing pond as I passed it on my walk. All the way to the Spitz along the bank of the Saalach, I walked through a litter of bronzed oak and beech leaves while more swirled around me, blown from the trees. The turquoise blue water to my left foamed over rocks, turbulent and fast. At the Spitz, I watched it pour into the wider waters of the Salzach, which, at the point of confluence, were more placid as they flowed north.

According the literature, I should have felt tension, unease. In fact, I felt productive and more focussed than I’ve been lately. Ideas swirled, sentences swept into mind, words frothed surfaceward. It was only late in the day when I spoke with my friend Edith that I put a name to the winds.

‘Föhn,’ she said. ‘They give some people headaches. Or worse.’

Much later, I awoke in the night and stood briefly at the window looking southeast. Hundreds of crystalline stars pierces the sky’s black expanse. I could pick out Orion and his belt among the multitude: More than that I did not try. Instead I returned to bed, thinking as I burrowed into the down, ‘It’s so clear, it must be freezing.’

This morning, though, as I write, the grey light is filtered behind the high, streaked clouds that come with the Föhn. The curve of the moon, as slender as a sigh, breaks through their grey gauze, its frail bow incandescent against the pale silver light. Around me, all is calm.

But I feel the skin across my nose tighten; my hands feel dry and taut. It will be another day of Föhn winds today.

Drawing In

As I wrote here last week, the golden days of our Indian summer have ended. Himself is still able to ride the ebike to work, but he departs under skies heavy with ambiguity. Will it rain? The forecast says no or unlikely, but the dark horizon offers no assurance.

Yet yesterday, the threat evaporated and the opaque grey sky gradually, meekly, surrendered. White valleys opened in the sky, vivid yellow light illuminated the golds and greens of the fading foliage in the wood, and, at last, clear blue shone overhead. Sometime after lunch, our friend and neighbour, Edith, suggested a walk.

The two of us strode the perimeter of the fishing pond, its brown surface reflecting the tops of the trees that surround it and the sky above.

‘No swans,’ I said. ‘Last week there was a swan in the morning, at least for a couple of hours.’

‘Yes,’ said Edith. ‘They come for a short time in the spring, then in the fall, then go away.’

I agreed, recalling the swans on the pond when we were first considering the flat on Katzenstraße. ‘They never seem to stay during the summer.’

Under the sun, it was soon warm enough to take off our sweaters. I worked my trekking poles, trying to hold them loosely and keep an even pace. We followed the path past the community allotments and the football pitch, then turned right to walk along the bank of the Saalach as it runs northwest, forming the border between Germany and Austria. It had rained heavily over the weekend, so the river ran wide and more turbulent than usual, its high waters the colour of milk chocolate.

The trees lining the bank were thick, so shade dappled the path. It was littered with bronze scalloped oak leaves and pointed acorns with round caps. But only a few; most still clung to the trees.

At the Spitz, that arrow-shaped point of land at the confluence of the rivers Saalach and Salzach, we stopped to watch the rushing waters, the wider, deeper waters of the Salzach subsuming the smaller Saalach as the mingled waters poured north. Then, turning south along the Salzach, we could see the sun through the interstices of thick leaves, its light lemony but low.

‘We should plan to walk most days at 2,’ Edith suggested. ‘It’s the best light of the day.’

I worried about walking in the snow, which will come soon. I started out one day early last winter, nearly slipped on the ice, and turned back. It was the end of my walks last year.

She reassured me. ‘It’s better after the early snows. You get used to it.’

I lifted by trekking poles and pointed to the rubber tips. They come off to unsheathe a point, like that of a ski pole. ‘And I’ll wear better boots, too, my hiking boots with lugs.’

We were back to the pond by now. Near the shore, small black waterfowl clustered.

‘In German, they’re called Blässhuhner,’ Edith said. ‘Like hens, only with the white mark,’ she said, pointing to her face.

‘It’s nicer than the name we called them in America. Coots.’

‘Funny,’ I added. ‘I didn’t see them all summer.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘They stay hidden then and come out in the fall.’

I didn’t ask why. I only thought how, in the eighteen months we’ve lived on Katzenstraße, I’ve come to know the rhythms of its seasons: The twittering small birds in the winter eating the seed I put out, the swans skirting the ice in the spring thaw, the blackbirds’ song and the croaking of frogs booming in the lengthening evenings of later spring, the swooping bats in the warmth of summer twilight, and now, the new gathering of small birds building flitting under the eaves, swans on the pond again, and Blässhuhner in the fading days of fall.

Today’s promised sun and warm never materialised. Outside my window, a rush of leaves whirl down, spinning on the wind. Tomorrow rain is forecast; the next day will be sunny but cold, dipping down toward zero. Evenings draw in, as the light fades quickly under the full harvest moon.

Last night, at the end of a mild, not cold, day, I barbecued the last of the chicken on the bone, working by porch light. Along side the grilling chicken, I put an acorn squash, the deep green ovoid split length-ways. It came out delicious, with a smoky deep sweet-savoury flavour I’d nearly forgotten, the taste of fall.

A Midsummer's Evening

Yesterday, midsummer, the Solstice, a lovely warm day, though threatening at times, it warmed up toward evening. Himself and I had dinner on the veranda, which practically shimmered in the unusual heat. We ate late, as usual, not sitting down before 8 or possibly 8:30. Afterward, enchanted by the gold light still striking the tall slender trunks of the trees in the wood, beguiled by the bright patches on the grass, the thin blue of the sky, I suggested we take a walk. We set off sometime after 9. I had my camera in my back pocket, but by the time we reached the fishing pond, the shadows were so long that the path was in twilight. Still the light off the pond, the pumpkin-coloured house across the way mirrored neatly in its brown-green surface, was beautiful.

We walked, as usual, to the Spitz, where the River Saalach pours into the Salzach, right at the border with Germany. There we stopped to watch the last fading pink in the pale sky over the confluence. A couple of young women had a small fire going in the sand, preparing, I would say, for a Solstice celebration. The thin blue smoke drifted over the rivers’ surface, mist I first thought, but no, smoke. It was too warm for mist, I suppose.

Across the Salzach, on the far side of the river, a slightly larger party was going, with two or three small fires and a band of smaller ones surrounding the group, candles or lantern, I would say.

‘Is that person naked,’ Himself asked.

We squinted through the dimming light. There were bodies as well as flames reflected in the river’s surface, but

‘No,’ he said. ‘I guess not.’

It wouldn’t have surprised us though, not really. It seemed a New Agey kind of group, gathering, no doubt, to mark the Solstice. Nakedness would not be out of line. No bother.

We walked along, companionable in a new-found way, sometimes holding hands, sometimes just touching. Just before we got to the bend in the path, the bend that’s just where a wooden bridge crosses a stream, we met another couple coming our way, younger, white patches on his pants just reflecting the last remnants of light.

‘Grüß Gott,’ they said.

‘Grüß Gott,’ we replied.

There was companionableness in their greeting: often in these walks others don’t acknowledge those they pass. But it was a sacred time, and others who were out in it were more than passers-by; they were fellow partakers of the magic.

The path, now overhung by dense foliage on both sides, became a tunnel. We rounded the bend, just by the bridge, and

‘Look!’ Said Himself. ‘A firefly!’

So there was. And another, and more, and more and more.

We stopped, enchanted. Tiny green-white stars, untethered from the heavens, flitted or hovered in among the bushes. We moved on a few paces and stopped again. Standing on the wooden bridge, staring into the water below, we could still see them, as one or two drifted out beyond the leafy banks.

‘I’ve only seen one firefly before, once, last summer,’ I said.

Himself said he’d only seen them once before, in Germany, years ago, before we met, walking with two young women in the early hours of a morning. ‘And up to no good,’ he added.

‘Are there fireflies in Ireland?’ I wondered.

‘No.’

We crossed the bridge and once more were walking parallel to the Salzach, trees along one side, water reflecting occasional lights from the opposite bank on the other. A small white waterfowl drifted north along the tide. The onion-domed steeple of the Bergheim church glowed pale gold. On its hill far above, Maria Plain was illuminated too.

On our right, in the low brushes, more fireflies glowed. All along the way, they danced or, occasionally, hovered in pairs, a few inches apart. We turned right onto the path leading through the park still watching their pale gleam.

‘It makes you understand why people believed in Sprites,’ said Himself.

It does. It was like scores and then more scores and more scores of tiny fairy lights, held by the Unseen, processing in the dark. One could imagine an invisible but parallel world, with the Little People going about their business, moving through the night.

Then – a crash in the bushes and something larger ran parallel and dashed across the path. Barely discernible but not invisible, another dark shape followed. Young deer, panicked no doubt by our voices, rushed to safety.

Then, passing the park maintenance building, we were suddenly under the harsh glare of man-made light.

‘Every building needs a fat florescent bulb,’ said Himself, grumbling.

Soon though, we once more entered the unlit dirt track running round the fishing pond. The fireflies still flitted in the dark leaves that bordered our walk. Down around the bottom of the track we went, skirting the bike and long pole of a fisherman, the lone holdout in the dark. We climbed the brief overgrown path between the wood and the last house on the street, still watching fireflies.

‘Look,’ he said, stopping suddenly. ‘Look at how green they are. Like emeralds. Greener than emeralds!’

I looked. In fact, they didn’t look as green as emeralds to me. They looked pale green, probably reflecting the light of the leaves.

But I said nothing as we turned into our driveway and climbed the stairs to the flat.

Magic is magic, after all.