During the 1970s, while my partner and I taught in Bavarian public schools, we made new German friends who led us on ambitious hikes into the thickly wooded Stone Forest (Steinwald) and Bohemian Forest.
Some of these deeply shaded paths traced the very border separating then-West Germany from Soviet-dominated East Germany. My new friend Rainer informed me one time that the wintry trail we trod actually traced the national boundary separating the divided Germanies. We were on a Cold War map’s black line marking what Winston Churchill called the “Iron Curtain” in a 1954 speech in Missouri.
To a young historian, this snowy trail reeked with a literal symbolism of the fearsome Iron Curtain dividing West and East, capitalism and communism, and Russia and NATO (USA plus western Europe and other allies).
The tall, dark conifers and whitened ground felt like good and evil, or J.R.R. Tolkien’s “true West” vs. Sauron’s ugly lands of despotism and horror. One certainly felt the pungent differences when shopping in Weiden Obpf (our West German town) and Prague in nearby Czechoslovakia. The Warsaw Pact country suffered obvious poverty and continued suffering from Soviet oppression even 26 years after the end of World War II.
Occasionally, our hiking group would encounter a pair of heavily armed East German border guards (Vopos) striding toward us — and Rainer previously had warned us that when this happened not to back off but be sure to step “right” onto West German soil — and not forget we could get into some hassle should we mistakenly set foot into East German territory controlled by the Russian Empire. I was never quite sure whether Rainer was joking, but I certainly had my passport with me and definitely stepped aside into the freedom-loving West when necessary.
The postmodern Santa Barbara County trails into tomorrow you have read about in a recent column are more than 10,000 kilometers from the Bavarian Steinwald — today a popular hiking area for Germans and all of the nearby European Union countries, including the Czech Republic. We were a bit daring and foolhardy in 1971 to hike into the Steinwald, yet interesting parallels to today persist.
Whether planning day hikes around Reyes Peak or into the Steinwald or Bohemian Forest today, many of the preparations and goals remain the same. Appropriate clothing such as heavy boots, long pants, water, a hat and hiking poles are the same, and many also choose a cell phone or other communication gear.
The Karnevalstadt (carnival city) of Munich, where we also had lived during this time, teaching at the Berlitz School, has remained a major base camp, as it were, for hiking excursions. Since my three grandchildren live in Munich today, I often visit. We’re here for five weeks to spend time with them and my son, who teaches music and performs as a bluegrass musician in Munich. Despite German distaste for the tragic reign of “the other guy” now ended, American bluegrass music and jazz remain highly popular in hotels, clubs, bars and at open-air concerts (the latter on hold with the Delta resurgence of COVID-19).
Forest trails wend their way through various German forests, and Munich’s intricate subway system and bus lines weave “paths” within the historic city, now drenched with plentiful rainfall. Packing for either sort of travel is oddly similar, too, and I carefully checked some of my handy day hiking lists while packing for our long excursion to Munich (which will include some European hiking). Living out of two bags for more than a month is a deep lesson in the “small is beautiful” ethos (E.F. Schumacher). No WiFi is another lesson in digital detox.
In our American forest, I seek out inspiring vistas, interesting animals, exciting rock art and flowing water. In Munich, I search for vistas of the towering Alps to the south and trudge along the banks of the surging Isar River. We visited the Wildpark Poing, which features many species, including rare European brown bears in extremely large areas they feel are better than restricted zoos. Munich is famous for its many public fountains fed by the Isar’s pure and flowing Alpine water, and there are scores of small parks available for the apartment dwellers. The central Englischer Garten encloses more than 900 acres!
In Los Padres National Forest, I’ve sought out the headwaters of the remote Sisquoc River (near Bear Camp) and prayed for precipitation to refill dying Manzana Creek and the Sisquoc River.
The Manzana and Sisquoc will cyclically disappear and reappear just as resilient Munich has rebounded from extraordinarily heavy Allied bombing raids in early 1945 — vicious and unnecessary “saturation bombing” aimed at the civilian population, and not targeting munitions or war-making facilities or German armies. (Yes, Dresden had it much worse, but Munich, Hamburg and other large cities were also basically leveled.)
Trails into tomorrow wind out of yesterday’s triumphs and tragedies. Today, Germany is a crucial military and economic partner, a vibrant social democracy, as well as a fantastic place to visit and find nearby hiking trails.
— Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity and has written extensively about the local backcountry. His latest book, Autobiography in the Anthropocene, is available at Lulu.com. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at cazmania3@gmail.com. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
