The Smell of Death

Wake-up feel: 5.

Upper right arm, right shoulder — pain that had been building since the day before, worse through the night. At 3:30 I reached for aspirin. Eventually sleep returned. Woke at 5:45, out of bed anyway.

Too painful for the exercises. Instead: out to the garden. Picked vegetables and flowers for the kitchen — breakfast for the guests was being prepared. Service before the walk.

By the time I reached the winding pathway between the Bodden and the rapeseed fields, the sun was already well above the horizon. The morning had started later and differently.

The first thing I noticed: the quiet. Birds chirping — fewer than in recent days. No wild pig. No crows, no ducks, no unknown birds crossing overhead. No plane. Reed fields to the left, rapeseed to the right. Almost nothing moving.

On the still Bodden, at a distance: a lone pair of swans. The main group far away — almost on the other side.

Flower time still, before nine.

I walked and tried to name the smell. A mixture. I turned it for a while before the sentence arrived:

It is the smell of death.

Back at Gut Nisdorf, the arm was already easier.

Day 38 — Phase 6 — Taste — Small Intestine — Diamond — Ecclesiastes
Gut Nisdorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Baltic Coast
© 2025–2026 Michel Garand | A Pilgrim's Fitness Plan | CC BY-SA 4.0
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