10 Getting Lost

10

Getting Lost

To my great delight I became lost almost immediately after setting out from my friend’s house.

To many people, being lost is a profoundly humiliating condition to be avoided if at all possible.

People who must know where they are at all times need maps, compasses—even global positioning devices and “where AM I” aids of all kinds--but I don’t.

For me, most of the fun and the learning seem to begin when I am lost. I truly love wandering, as they say, where there is no path—because when I am lost I begin to rely on other guidance, other sources of information, perhaps imaginary for you, but always available to me: my “guardian angel”, my “intuition” or whatever it may be.

For me, allowing this guidance to emerge and to accept its direction is one of the most compelling reasons to “pilgrim” in the first place. Really, if everything is pre-planned and pre-known, why not just take a “package tour” with everything paid in advance and no surprises (you hope!). I have actually seen advertisements for “pilgrimage tours” to well-known “holy places” where the client can pay for a time-limited “pilgrimage” without the inconvenience and discomfort of walking.

Of course, people are very different and many may profit from such tours but they do not appeal to me.

Please understand that I never plan to get lost. I really expected that, since both the Mangfal and the Inn Rivers have been “roads” of commerce for centuries and since Germans love well-cared-for walking paths through pretty scenery, there would be connections from the beautifully maintained Mangfal canal-path to the place where the canal rejoined the Mangfal River (probably, I imagined, some rustic but well-built bridge) and then to its confluence with the great Inn river where there would naturally be (I imagined) a lovely park-like path beside the majestic river all the way to Straubing.

Indeed, I had followed the course of the Inn on another pilgrimage in the southerly direction as it flowed out of the Alps with no problem, but on this occasion, when I arrived at the junction of the Mangfal with the Inn, instead of bridge and park, I found myself on a sandbar with a swamp on one side, rushing water on the other, freeway bridges overhead and fenced private property in every other direction.

There is no room for a picturesque pilgrimage path in up-to-date Rosenheim, and I am perhaps the first “real pilgrim” to walk this way in a long, long while.

tomasito, 2009


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