Lebenslauf

While living in Austria, I came across the word Lebenslauf which German-speakers use much in the same way we, in English, use Curriculum Vitae (CV).  It is used to describe the document that outlines one’s life experience, detailing their work and research background and most often used to gain (future) employment.  The translation of Lebenslauf is something like the course (or walk) of one’s life.  Your life’s trajectory, perhaps.  I take the word and have a little fun with its meaning and record here the important walks of my life.

Walks have included:

the Blue Dot trail in Monroe;

the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu;

following in the footsteps of both medieval and modern-day pilgrims along the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain;

tracing an arroyo with no name to its source near Hummingbird Village in Belize;

meandering for over 100 miles alongside the Housatonic River river from tide to headwaters in southern New England;

walking across my natal Housatonic watershed perpendicular to the main river’s flow;

Situationist-inspired dérives in Mexico, D.F. and Athens, Ohio;

from Holywood to Glendalough in Wicklow;

along the coastline of the Bay of Fundy while the tide went out;

from north to south along the Loyalsock;

making tracks along old, but still functional rail lines near Cuenca, Spain;

drawing (with my feet) the grid line created by the formatting of the Camporrobles (Spain) topographical map;

superimposing the route of the Asunción, Paraguay marathon on Madrid, Spain;

Linea 11 bus route in the very same Madrid;

the 3500 km. footpath along the ridgeline of my bio-regional mountains, the Appalachians;

tunneling a new line through a thick blanket of snow in Salzburg, Austria–unaware of the layers stacked beneath;

50 kilometers clockwise around the sacred Untersberg;

350 kilometers from Salzburg to the Sea;

185 kilometers around the coastline of the island of Menorca;

Salzburg to the See (Fuschl am See);

Salzburg to the See 2 (Königssee);

Salzburg to the See 3 (Obertrumersee);

the 800+ kilometer Transpirenaica along the Pyrenees Mountains from Atlantic to Mediterranean;

tracing the line(s) of Salvador Dali’s mustache on the Cadaqués downtown grid;

the Masaki Peninsula Loop in Dar es Salaam;

7 times around the Baobab tree at Msasani Beach;

to the highest peak in Cuba (Pico Turquino);

the marathon route in Havana;

the West Highland Way;

the Batona Trail in the New Jersey Pine Barrens;

to the top of 22 of the 46 Adirondack High Peaks;

the 17 miles from my childhood home in Monroe to the sea at Short Beach and Long Island Sound;

the Ruta de Pedra en Sec (GR-221) that follows the Serra de Tramuntana in Mallorca;

the Via Jacobi across Switzerland from east to west;

the Camino Baztan from Bayonne to Pamplona through French and Spanish Basque country;

and the Via Gottardo across Switzerland from north to south.