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.

Bird Song

Himself has been considering cycling to work, a fair distance from our flat on the northwest of Salzburg. So yesterday, a clear day after a stormy night, we decided to bike the route to check it out.

We cycled the now-familiar path along the River Salzach, reaching the Altstadt in about 20 minutes. As we rounded the final bends before reaching the city’s historic core, I looked up to see the Hohensalzburg rising on the Festung, from which it dominates the city. Clustered forest-like around its base were centuries-old domes and steeples. Beyond it stood the green-covered Alps, and I thought what a storybook picture it looked. Salzburg seemed to me in the moment a gem, a wonderful place to live.

We continued southward along the river, a route less familiar but still one I have travelled to reach my yoga class. We were cycling now past moderately sized buildings – municipal and private offices, university buildings and apartment houses – that line the quay south of the Mozartsteg.

The bike path was still crowded, filled with skaters, walkers and cyclists on this pleasant Sunday afternoon. In fact, I found myself manoeuvring carefully to overtake slower cyclists while avoiding oncoming ones. Along the path, people paused in walking their dogs to talk. A man leaned into a car, talking to the driver as he stopped in the street. Two middle-aged nuns stood talking to a man and a woman as they peered into the window of a bright red van. ‘Super!’ said one nun just as I passed her.

As I wondered what had excited her enthusiasm, I thought, ‘She’s just another woman, not much older than me. Why shouldn’t she be pleased by ordinary things on a beautiful spring day.’

About thirty-five minutes along we entered a wooded area, the river still to our left. By now I was getting tired, and neither of us was sure how much farther we needed to travel. We knew only that the campus of buildings was beyond where a tributary joins the Salzach. The trees in the wood we passed were green with the freshness of spring, the ground damp beneath then. As we rolled along I realised there was no litter, unlike in America or, even worse, in Ireland where rubbish is indiscriminately strewn along green lanes as well as  remote tracks. Is the corporation of Salzburg better at picking up rubbish, I wondered, or, more likely, is its population less apt to litter?

Another fifteen minutes along, we passed a beer garden or gasthaus on what seemed to be the shores of a small lake. People sat on the grass or at tables under the trees. Then the trail rose suddenly, and we were on top of a large dam crossing the river, water roiling dramatically in front of it and swelling more calmly beyond it. A few minutes along, we came at last to the convergence of waters, one river pouring into another.

By now, it was as though we had left the city behind us altogether The river here was wide and placid. Swans shone white on its surface. The water was pale, pale blue-green and nearly opaque, a smooth nearly unearthly colour after the clear bog brown of the rivers we knew in Ireland. Rising steeply just beyond, jagged, tree-covered Alps framed the scene.

We passed families playing on the sandy shore and fishermen stretched beside their poles. A pair of women walked behind shaggy Yorkies, one cream and one caramel. A woman in jeans rested her head on a man’s shoulder as they walked along, hands held tightly between them. Along the shore, a small clear stream revealed pale sand and brown pebbled in its shallow depths before it flowed into the opaque pale turquoise river.

We found at length what we had come for and turned to return to the city. Now late in the afternoon, grey clouds, warning of another storm, massed overhead. In the wood to our left, pale green of new beech leaves and broader leaves of white-flowered horse chestnuts filtered the light overhead. It was, briefly, so like Ireland, where the intensity of green seems at times to tint the very air. For the moment, the path was deserted; no cyclist or jogger or skater or dog walker passed us. Other than the murmur of the river and the whirl of my wheels, it was very still. Then I heard from the wood, very distinctly, what it took a moment to comprehend.

Coo-Coo. Coo-Coo. Coo-Coo.

Ahead, Himself wheeled around and raised his hand, pointing to the wood. Stopping and straddling my bike, I nodded. Yes, yes, I heard, I heard.

Coo-Coo. Coo-Coo. Coo-Coo.

Though I  had never before heard the cuckoo's call, there was no mistaking it, two clear notes repeated again and again. It was sweeter than I had imagined, soft but clear and sustained, like chimes, reverberating through the dense green wood.

Coo-Coo. Coo-Coo. Coo-Coo.

Then the notes stopped, and we were freed to continue, northward with the Salzach, toward home.