The Kids Hike the Vosges

A view of the Château du Frankenbourg ruins, and the Vosges, from a mountain peak just above it.

21.juli.1981 – I was ready to go, the heavy summer air wrestling with my yearning to move, to dance, to ripple in the sun. At the time, I was reading D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow, which may have influenced my mood and how I portrayed it in my journal.

Two weeks earlier, I’d met up with my good friend Jim Prchlik in Kassel, Germany. He was staying at a communal flat with his friend Albert Riesselmann. Since then, I’d been hanging out in that city of art and culture, breaking up my stay with hitchhiking excursions to West Berlin and Amsterdam. Jim and I planned to do some hiking and hitchhiking together, but were awaiting the arrival of the third member of our team, Jim’s friend Nancy Faunce from the University of Michigan. When she joined us that evening, our circle was complete. She and Jim had been romantically involved and were still close friends. They’d worked the vendange together the previous fall and then wintered in the Canary Islands off the Moroccan coast before returning to the European continent. At first glance, Nancy appeared delicate, with fair British features, but she was an excellent hiker, strong and energetic. She had a finely calibrated moral compass, attuned to the value of random acts of kindness, sharing her extra pfennigs with anyone who asked, picking up every small bit of trash she came across.

We began to refer to ourselves in the third person – The Kids – characterizing ourselves as playful, light-hearted compagnons de voyage. Our destination was the Vosges, a low mountain range that defines France’s eastern border with Germany. That evening, with our heads full of hash and Peter Tosh's reggae beats, we scurried around, organizing our belongings, loading up our backpacks, preparing for weeks of hiking and camping. We hit the road the next afternoon, grabbing a bus to the autobahn, and as luck would have it, flagging down the first car to pass by, a nice German couple going to Freiberg, who took us within 30 kilometers of Strasbourg, the starting point for our hike in the Vosges.

We met steady rain that day, but as we were being dropped off at a rest area, the setting sun cast a double rainbow across the sky over the Schwarzwald to our west. Our eyes followed the arc of that rainbow as its colors cascaded down to its foot in the valley below us. We set up our camp in the woods and prepared a hearty soup and sandwich supper enjoyed inside the shelter of our orange polyester polygon tent.

In the morning, after hobo coffee and a few slices of good German Roggenbrot,[1] we found ourselves languishing, one exit short of a straight shot to Strasbourg. We traded stories with other hitchhikers, as one often does when the hitching goes slow. So, when a woman dropped off a hitchhiker while we were taking a lunch break, and the others learned she was going to Strasbourg, they told her about us, hailed us away from our lunch, and away we went.

Located on the French side of the Rhine River in the Alsace region,[2] Strasbourg was a lovely city, what we saw of it. We bought baguettes and camping gaz. We searched for a map of Vosges hiking trails but were unwilling to invest 25 French francs in the one we found. Strasbourg’s Cathédrale Notre-Dame was beautiful – delicate reddish brown sandstone spires piercing the sky. Inside, the stone arches and vaulted ceiling harmonized with the bright intricate colors of stained glass. Above the entryway to the church, a rose window proclaimed the Roman Catholic version of a mandala. In one of the side naves a strange contraption – an astronomical clock – displayed seemingly everything,[3] the product of some Renaissance mind. Alas, the mystical peace of the interior seemed to be lost on the herd of tourists tromping through the sacred space.

We left the city, hiking through a couple of adjoining towns until we reached the open road, the foothills of the Vosges in sight to the west and rays of sunlight boosting our spirits. We caught a lift to Barr from a Moroccan drywall installer, and tried to pick up a trail from there. We hiked another four kilometers to Andlau, a town along the Route des Vins d’Alsace, still hunting for a trail, finally camping in a wooded area near a stream west of town, below the medieval ruins of Château d’Andlau. It was raining again, but we were happy to be camping. We quickly set up our tent and fixed a big batch of spaghetti, which we ate with gusto.

Next morning, we sipped strong coffee while packing up, leaving behind the mysteries of stone ruins, rails, cable lifts, never knowing what it was all for. The Kids finally found a trail with a red blaze and decided it was as good as any. We followed those blazes up into the hills, wild raspberries and strawberries along the way, crossing logging roads, past high meadows filled with purple lupine, to a mountain peak (elev. 1,000 m.) from where we could see the Rhine valley to the east and cloud-shrouded valleys and mountains to the west. But we also encountered more rain, cold winds, clouds flying swiftly past us. We pulled out our rain ponchos and hiked onward, getting soaked as we stumbled down the narrow trail, weighed down by our backpacks, our pant legs drenched by wet brush. Jim slipped and took a hard fall, but we all recovered, setting up our tent as more dark clouds settled in. 

We closed up the tent, lit a couple candles for warmth, and changed into dry clothes. We soothed ourselves with a multi-course meal of green salad with a yogurt dressing, rice with a hot curry sauce, bread and camembert, the orange that had been serving as our hash pipe, and a taste of milk chocolate. Even with all the cold and rain, it felt good to be there with two friends, laughing at our miseries, sharing our pleasures. It was a moment of grace – a simple life that transformed commonplace comforts into exquisite luxuries – companionship, camaraderie, and the vagabond life, carrying our food and shelter on our backs.

We moved slowly the next morning, letting our gear dry out in the sun. Coffee warmed us while we lingered on the edge of a designated “zone de tranquillité.”[4] We ended up staying that day near the top of Mount Ungersberg (elev. 901 m.). The skies cleared by the afternoon, and the sun wrapped us in its warm arms. I wandered off to pick a mess of raspberries to make a stovetop cake that didn’t turn out as I hoped but was still tasty, savored after the lentil stew and mackerel salad we made and the bottle of wine Nancy had cajoled from a local forestier. I could’ve lived this way indefinitely, but soon Nancy would be leaving us for the fog of London and Jim and I would be continuing south toward the sun of Italy. 

The Kids awoke to an early morning rain, but the skies cleared by the time we finished our breakfast of coffee and scrambled eggs, and we were on our way. Down through woods and past vineyards into a valley, we came upon Villé, one in a series of charming Alsatian towns of narrow cobblestone streets and medieval half-timbered homes. We bought camping gaz and foodstuffs and found a good trail map that helped us ascertain our location and route, and then headed for Château du Frankenbourg, located atop a mountain (elev. 750 m.) about 12 kilometers away, a steady uphill hike. As the sun was dipping toward the horizon, we arrived at a 12th-century ruin with a stunning view of surrounding valleys and mountains. We pitched our tent and made a campfire inside the decrepit walls of the château, rewarding ourselves with another of our fine meals – pasta, heavy on the marinara.

Jim and I at our Château du Frankenbourg campsite. Photographs by Nancy.

After a hearty breakfast, we proceeded south out of the hills and then up again towards Haut Koenigsbourg. We stopped for lunch at a convenient picnic table along the trail, the sun pleasantly blazing, and took a bit of a siesta afterward. When we continued our climb, we discovered Haut Koenigsbourg was a hot tourist spot and so made a quick detour. By late afternoon we were back in the woods, heading down the mountain. We came to the town of Thannenkirch and walked about a kilometer beyond to a mountain stream tumbling over rocks. Tired from the heat and the hike, we set up camp there beside the trail. I wandered off to pick the wild cherries – small, sweet, deep red – that abound in the region. They made a delicious fruit salad with yogurt and wild mint, and also spiced up our mushroom and curry rice dish. The night grew chilly as we gazed up at a sky overflowing with a Milky Way of stars.

Wednesday, my 27th birthday, our tent turned bright orange in the morning sun. I received birthday kisses from Jim and Nancy. We sipped our coffee, bathed in the mountain stream – first bath in a week – and lazed in the sun.[5] I stirred up a swarm of bees while picking raspberries, and that woke me up. Off we headed on our trusty red-blaze trail, reaching Château Ribeaupierre an hour later, from whose tower, still standing above ruined walls, we could survey where we’d come from and where we were going. We hiked down into the town of Ribeauvillé, where Jim and Nancy went off to buy groceries and supplies while I reviewed a trail map at the mairie.[6] We decided to head for a refuge a two-hour uphill hike from there.

Sure enough, we found a little hut with a picnic table at Colline du Seerlacken (elev. 633 m.) beside a meadow clearing in the pine forest. While Jim and Nancy gathered firewood, I picked a shirtful of raspberries for dinner. I diced an onion, half a zucchini, and six teeth off a huge head of garlic, stirred that into a flour batter, and pan-fried vegetable fritters over our fire. Nancy made a mushroom sauce, and Jim a hearty salad. Jim pulled from his backpack a bottle of wine they had bought in Ribeauvillé. The next surprise was a box of French waffle crackers and a jar of pâte à tartiner au chocolat noisette.[7] While digesting our dinner and relaxing by the fire, one last marvel was produced – a tall elegant bottle of Gewürtraminer. As this memorable birthday celebration wound down, we sipped the sweet regional favorite, fed the fire, and talked late into the night under a star-speckled sky. 

The front cover and inside page of my lovely two-by-three-inch birthday card.

By the time we awoke Thursday morning, Prince Charles and Lady Diana were married. We could sense the excitement even there in rural France. We set off for Kaysersberg, a brisk six-kilometer hike, luckily catching a quick ride from there to Colmar. We went straight to the gare, where Nancy had just enough time to buy her train ticket and join us for one last lunch together. We saw her off with kisses and hugs. Pared down to two, missing Nancy’s spiritedness already, The Kids prepared to push off for the other side of the Rhine. We would continue south toward Italy, traveling together for another month.

Footnotes:

[1] Hobo coffee is made by boiling loose grounds in a pot of water. Roggenbrot is rye bread.

[2] Alsace was the homeland of my maternal grandfather’s line (Trares).

[3] Not only the time of day, but the date, the current zodiac time, and the relative positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets of the Solar System.

[4] According to a sign posted there.

[5] Or as Whitman might say, we leaned and loafed at our ease, observing a spear of summer grass.

[6] City hall.

[7] Chocolate hazelnut spread. Think Nutella.