Monuments of Time

Karl Hirt

It was the first clear day on the mountain after nearly a week of cold mist and rains. The sun had burnt away the heavy clouds, leaving only thin, white wisps to dart around below me, obscuring bits and pieces of the valley floor. During the day the sun had warmed and dried the air, but cool damp currents still hung around the high grasses and wildflowers. A warm wind was blowing, chasing the cool currents around the hillside, welling up the smells of the earth: sweet, drying hay, a tinge of manure, and the clean aroma of alpine flowers.

After a long day’s work I was headed to the top of the mountain. I had with me a sturdy walking stick and a backpack with my dinner in it−half a loaf of solid German bread, a hunk of mountain cheese, two smoked Landjäger sausages, and a bottle of dunkel bier.  As I started up the path, I could see through the trees to my left, thousands of feet below, flat fields and small villages spread out like an ornate quilt. To my right the path dropped away into a fertile green bowl, a secluded haven that was sheltered by the embrace of mountain ridges. They seemed to isolate the farm from the rest of the world, like city walls, keeping it an idyllic remnant of simpler, gentler times. The path continued on. The trees formed thick curtains, their branches woven together, each tree vying for space where there was none, fighting to get the best view of the valley below. Slivers of a world beyond the trees came in and out of focus offering fleeting moments of clarity. How frustrating it would be to know something so beautiful existed on the other side of a closed curtain; perhaps one day the tree that has watched the view for its entire life will die so the others might see. 

The line of trees broke suddenly, as if repulsed by some force. The view was once more revealed, only this time there was no obstruction of the town, with houses spread out around the church at its center, a lonely ant−sized tractor crawling across a farm field, birds circling round and round below. There were no more trees up here, and any hint of manure and hay had been blown away. All that was left above the trees was untainted, cleansing air. To the left, the sun had begun to flirt with thoughts of sleep, touching the quilt ever so slightly, but summer days are long, and the sun like a child wanted to stay up a little longer−there was time enough before he went to sleep.  Only a little farther now till I reached my destination, the Jagerdenkmal. Over the last false summit I could see a stupa-like stone structure. The memorial was made of cool, grayish, windswept stone, a solitary sentinel of the mountain, a guardian of place and memory. The mountain path led directly to the steps of the monument, as if deciding for me where I should go. These steps were made of stones gathered from the many different war torn countries: Greece, Poland, France, Russia, Norway, the Caucuses, Yugoslavia, Italy, Hungary, and Finland. In ten short steps I had travelled the physical breadth of the war. 

Inside the stupa were a chamber and a plaque whose inscription gave the place its aura of solemn reflectivity:

“Wir waren eins 

in der liebe zur heimat,

und haben ihr

alles gegeben

Bruder! 

Wir klein ist dein streit”

We were one 

In the love of the homeland

And have given her our all,

Brother!

How small is your struggle

The warmth and vitality of the air and sun and the comforting smells ebbed away, ever so slightly, absorbed like light into fog, not gone but changed under the heaviness of these words. Beer, bread, and sausage seemed somewhat wrong. 

I slumped down in thought on the edge of the stone foundation of the monument looking out at the mountains spanning more than 180 degrees from west through the south and past east, with the sinking sun to my right. Not long ago, men young and old, with strong shoulders and bronzed necks had been called to duty, torn from the land of their ancestors to fight for an ideology that was as foreign to them as the steppes of Mongolia, only to return if they were lucky, to a land that would never again be so pure or so whole, a land where pride and deed would eternally be marred by history.

The clink of the Alpkönig beer bottle in my bag against the stone as it slouched open beside me stirred me from my melancholy. The smells of the heavy bread and dried sausages filled my nose reminding me that sadness was only temporary. I munched slowly on my meal, as the sun gently set itself down under the rolling green and brown quilt landscape. As the moon draws the tides, the sun seemed to pull the semicircular wall of mountains in around itself and around the monument where I sat, guarding us all from the void of oncoming night. Time, like my upward trek would bring clarity and renewal. Each new vantage point offered a new view, stripped of an altering lens, till at the very top no abstractions remained, no walls, no curtains, no bluffs. The view was pure and revealed in its entirety.