The Hare
First in eighty-one days, then gone — and the west wind the whole way.
Wake-up feel: 6.
Up first at three minutes past three. No thought woke me — only the wind. Down again. Awake at a quarter to four, the same. I got up. The swim first, then I made ready for the day.
Out along the winding road. The Bodden and the reed on one side; the rapeseed and the rising sun somewhere behind the clouds on the other.
At the start of the walk a hare — a big one — some way ahead. The first in eighty-one days. Both of us caught off guard. It ran off around the bend. I kept on. Around the bend, the hare again — and again it ran. We did not see each other after that.
It was a hare, not a rabbit — the rabbit came to this coast late, with the Romans and the Middle Ages; the hare is the old animal here. A creature of the edges of the day, dawn and dusk — of the seam between the field and the wild, met and not held. The Slavs who held this shore left their gods at Arkona, and no hare among them. But in the broader telling the hare is a shapeshifter — a suitor, a bird, the devil's kin, and then simply gone — and to a child it says, in the old rhyme, do not look for me, I am not yours, I have gone away. The old telling, not this shore. The animal I met at the start of the walk has been a creature of thresholds and vanishings a very long time.
A strong westerly this morning, stronger than yesterday. I faced it head on. White caps over the Bodden. The wind would not let me stop. At times it pushed me forward. At times it tried to push me another way. I went on with no particular thought — the mind did not seem to care, it only wandered.
Before the high point of the path, a seagull, alone, flying into the west wind along the shore of the Bodden. Just after — out of the reed — a pair of ducks lifted and seemed to follow it.
No particular thought, the mind only wandering, I went back to Gut Nisdorf.
The calendar marks a new moon around five this morning — the dark of the cycle, the moon still in Taurus, in earth. A Root day: the new turn set down in the ground. From just after seven the moon begins its descent — the planting time, when the work goes downward and the forces are drawn into the soil. Then at two this afternoon the moon crosses into Gemini, into air, and the day turns to Flower. A cycle that begins before dawn, in the dark and in the ground, and by afternoon lifts toward the flower.
Twice the hare ran. Then never again.
"Seven places were on the table. The number was never the question. Now I am listening, the direction has been read. I am here to serve, with. The needs of the people who have been close to me all these years belong in this too."
Day 81 — Phase 12 — Ego / Other — Liver — Jasper — 1 Corinthians 13
Gut Nisdorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Baltic Coast
© 2025–2026 Michel Garand | A Pilgrim's Fitness Plan | CC BY-SA 4.0
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