The Hidden Path (WINNER OF THE BEAUTY AWARD for Spiritual)

The Birthday

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
- Abraham Lincoln

Two hours and a lively lunch with my family later, Beni and I were on our way to the lake. Each equipped with a plastic bag holding our towels. We could have taken his car, but since it was such a nice day, we had preferred walking.

A decision, which we started to sincerely regret about five minutes into our journey. Yes, the landscape spreading out before and all around us was beautiful, with its rolling lush green hills that were dotted with small houses, trees and even woods. The sky spanning over us was deep blue, its brilliant color radiating without a single cloud in sight.

The narrow, crushed earth path we were treading lead us through extensive green meadows of about ten centimeter high, fresh grass. From where we were walking, we even had the first glimpse of the lake below, nestled in between gently sloping hills. Its water glittered enticingly in the golden sunlight.

Yes, we definitely should have enjoyed the walk, but there was only one small problem.

Sweat.

It was running down our bodies, which were still accustomed to the winter temperatures. Actually, it was only running down Beni's body. Mine never sweat, for some reason. I just felt uncomfortably hot, a rather foreign sensation for me.

With every minute we spent walking in the blazing sun, I was more and more convinced that there was absolutely no way I could ever lose this bet!

. . .until we finally emerged from behind the string of small, hut-like houses, which ran along the bank of the lake about thirty meters off the shore. And had our first good view of the watery surface.

Actually. . . no. We didn't. We should have, but we didn't.

Because, you see. . . our view was partially obstructed. . .

By about one and a half meters of piled up ice!

I almost did not believe my own eyes: there, right in front of us, blocking our path to the lake, lay hundreds of about five centimeter thick ice floes! Stacked on top of each other, they formed what looked like a giant, multi-layered ice-cake.

I stared at it in disbelief, wonder and amazement: I had never seen anything like it! Slowly, the feeling of surprise turned to one of suspicion: had Beni known? Was this the reason why he had been so sure I would not go swimming that day?

I turned towards him the same moment he turned towards me. The expression of astonishment on his face, however, spoke volumes. He had not expected the gravity of the situation any more than I had.

"Ach du liebe Zeit!" I was the first one to speak again, "what on earth has happened here?"

Beni shook his head, slowly advancing towards the oversized, irregularly shaped ice-cube before us. "I guess that sometime during the winter, a storm pushed the ice up on the shore."

"This must have been quite some storm on our little lake!" I exclaimed exasperatedly, following him cautiously.

Two kilometers wide and about seven kilometers long, our Wallersee is not that small. But it's not really big enough to unleash any impressive forces of nature, either. In fact, in summer it only occasionally produces even enough wind for slow windsurfing. . .

Standing just shy of the small mountain of ice, we were finally able to get a good view of the world beyond it: the rest of the lake, including the bank on the opposite side, appeared to be ice-free. The storm must have been one-sided. Raising my eyes, I let them travel across the green hills greeting us from the opposite side of the lake, only a few hundred meters away from where we were standing. Beautiful.