Bill Durden

The human longing for continuity and the familiar is a powerful drive. For decades my wife and I have traveled to the High Black Forest, Germany (Hinterzarten) for intensive daily hiking.

During our first hike every year, I am on the lookout for a fallen branch that with creative application of my Swiss Army knife can be turned into a sturdy and reliable walking stick. I simply cannot accept the metal walking sticks so ubiquitously available these days, just as I cannot accept metal bats exclusively in use for softball and non-professional baseball. It is wood in firm grip that connects me to my forest path, just as it was in my youth the imprint of the ball on a wooden bat (when I was fortunate enough to strike the balll) that brought me—with sound and feeling-- into the game.

At the end of our stay in Germany,  I always place that year’s iteration of my walking stick along a path so as to be not too visible that I might reclaim it the following year, but visible enough to invite the discerning eye of another hiker to take it up as her own. Upon my return, I look for the stick I left behind. Sometimes I find it and take it up again for another season—nicely weathered during a German winter.

But often I look in my hiding place and the stick is gone. I like to think that it has been recycled--either to another hiker or back to nature from which it came. If that is the case, I begin the delightful search once again for my next generation of wooden walking stick.