Field Note #1

You go on a trip with your parents every summer to rural Austria, and you watch your grandparents get older. The campground you go to is filled with unfamiliar faces the first time you go.

Every year you remember people, the man who stays where the camp tapers off into a gate, he sleeps in a tent a few inches bigger than himself, the college students from the Netherlands, the camp owner who rides by on her bicycle, and the man who mows the camp places, he is in his 60s. 

Every year you come back to the Wohnwagen and it seems to shrink. You can no longer stretch out on the bed to read, you have to stay outside in the sun. Standing up straight is impossible now, you have to sit down to be comfortable in the Wohnwagen.

Every day you go to the lake and swim. You have no phone service, it is only you, your family, and the water. People crowd the beach when the sun comes out. Even though you have been living here for the past week, they get the ideal location for sunbathing, right in between the trees, a perfect yin and yang of shade and sunlight. To escape the sweltering heat and sun beating down on you, you and your sister go into the water. In the water, you play a game of chicken with her, who can swim out the farthest. You always lose. Some days the fish swim closer than others, when they do you see them get hunted by the Haubentaucher. These birds dart underwater and appear on the other side of the lake with a fish in their mouth. They do this so often that it seems like a game for them, in 10 seconds they will have caught their lunch. You leave the water and pass the people speaking German, Dutch, and Italian. When you get back to camp your Opa asks for help with his inflatable boat, you carry it all the way back down and go on a ride with him. He tells you of the times he used to swim across the entire lake with his friends, you see fish swimming furiously past the boat as if they were racing you. 

The boat ride is over and you talk with your Opa as you carry the boat back up with him. He asks if you would like to go Schwammerl suchen (mushroom hunting), you don’t like to turn down a challenge so of course you go with him. You change into your hiking clothes and shoes, and waiting for him you find a stick that you decide will be his hiking stick and carve patterns into it for him. He comes out of the Wohnwagen, “los geht’s.” It’s time to go find some mushrooms.