Two days, forty kilometres, over a thousand metres up the Brocken and back down: seven pilgrims, one question, and seven quiet sources of strength to carry home.
Dear Pilgrims,
It is half past eight on a Saturday morning in Ilsenburg. We have fetched a strong coffee from the bakery but for the first kilometres through the Ilse Valley in the Harz Mountains, we needed nothing to wake us.
The green valley, the rushing water, the morning air: we can hardly stop looking.
Seven pilgrims came with me on this journey. Two days, forty kilometres, more than a thousand metres of climbing, up the Brocken, the highest peak in Northern Germany, and down again.
We carried one question with us, and it is a simple one: where does our strength come from?
Why the Harz
I liked the physical challenge. Anyone who sits at a desk a lot and otherwise only walks in flat country gets to know their body again here. The route is neither difficult nor does it require special skill but it does ask something of you.
And the Harz is more than a mountain range. A national park with rushing streams, dense forests, weathered crags, and at the same time a landscape under pressure: bark beetle, drought, storm damage, tourism.
It is this friction that makes a place interesting to me.
On top of that, a mythical region full of witches and devils and Walpurgis Night, on paths that Heine and Goethe walked before us.
A well at midday
We follow the river uphill for a long while, past the Ilse Falls. On this sunny weekend, we share the path with many others.
Around midday we reach the Kleiner Brocken, a secondary peak. Before we walk the final climb, I look with the pilgrims not up towards the summit, but down into a well: Jacob’s well, from the Gospel of John.
Jesus is tired from the long road and sits down by the well. A woman comes to draw water, and he asks her: “Give me something to drink.” A conversation unfolds.
And he says: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
A spring within you.
Sleep and food are sources of strength, but they run low; you have to keep refilling them. Anyone who had slept too little or eaten too little felt it on the climb.
But what keeps us going when our strength is all but gone, in life as on the mountain? From which spring inside us does that flow? We walk on with that question.
The summit, and down again
At the top, we collect our stamp for the hiking pass. Then the descent, against the stream of people climbing up to the summit.
We choose a quieter but harder path: steeper, with many boulders, every step needing to be placed carefully so as not to turn an ankle.
The good thing about stretches like this is that everything else disappears. Not one spare thought remains. We are simply there, wholly on the path.
Evening in Schierke
In the afternoon we arrive in Schierke. In the evening we sit together outside and talk about the day, about what we experienced, and about what gives us strength.
As it grows darker and the first drops of rain fall, I find myself with the prophet Elijah: “I have had enough, Lord, take my life.”
Elijah has given everything; he is at his end. He lies down under a bush and wants no more. Then he sleeps. An angel touches him and does not say: pull yourself together. It says: “Get up and eat. The journey is too great for you.”
First the food, then the task. First the rest, then the next step. That, too, is a source of strength, and this evening it is a simple one: a meal, a bed, a roof against the rain.
Seven sources of strength
We begin the second day with one last climb, up the Barenberg. From the top we take in the view once more before the long descent ahead of us.
Around midday we stop at a church in Elend. Here I share seven sources of strength with the group, sources no one has to buy, and which ask for no perfect conditions: being outside; staying in motion; doing nothing; being connected; believing in something greater; having rituals; making something beautiful.
The temptation is to turn this into a to-do list. That is not the point. The point is to notice which of these has been doing you good, and which you have let slip.
Start small: a walk with no destination, a morning without your phone, a candle before breakfast, an honest conversation with a friend.
Walking in silence
Then comes a long stretch, straight on along the river Bode. We walk it in silence, so that each of us can sit alone with the question of our sources of strength. The rushing of the stream stays with us, the forest gives shade, the sun warms us.
Later we gather our strength at the Königshütte waterfall for the final kilometres. They turn out long and hard; we all feel our energy coming to an end. We reach Rübeland in the afternoon, and from there begin the journey back to Berlin by bus and train.
The path itself
I had not chosen the seven sources by chance. For me, pilgrimage itself has become a source of strength, sometimes all seven at once.
I am outside. And in motion. I have nothing to achieve; no one expects anything.
I feel connected to nature and to the group in a particular way. And every step through creation reminds me of the Creator.
Rituals carry us too: the stamp in the hiking pass, and our time of silence.
And something beautiful? A hundred years ago, someone might have painted a picture here; Heine wrote his travel report Harzreise.
One of our pilgrims, Faisal Usmani, reached for his phone and shared his two days with us in a short film.
The Harz kept its promise. It asked something of our bodies, and we learned a good deal about our sources of strength, about our bodies, about this landscape and its history.
If you like, take a short walk in the coming days, just you and one question: which of my sources of strength have I let slip for too long?
Buen Camino,
Alexander
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