Departure

March 26, 2026 — Brandenburg, Germany

I am 64 years old, Canadian, and I have lived in Brandenburg, Germany for thirty years. This morning I leave.

The train departs at 07:11 from Frankfurt (Oder). My destination is Gut Nisdorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Baltic Coast — a certified organic estate with a herb and vegetable garden, one kilometre from the Vorpommersche Boddenlandschaft National Park. I will work in the garden with Achim Ecker — ZEGG co-founder, thirty years of permaculture — for up to three months. I will walk the Baltic landscape. I will do morning sun salutations before coffee. I will write.

This is not a sabbatical. It is not a retreat. It is a pilgrim's fitness plan — being lived before it is published.

What this is

The body I am bringing to Gut Nisdorf is 64 years old. It has carried four children, a grandchild, thirty years of building things — projects, communities, relationships, systems. It has also carried grief, conflict, the weight of things not yet resolved and things resolved in ways that cost more than expected. It is not broken. It is not in crisis. It is ready — finally, honestly ready — to be regenerated rather than merely maintained.

A Pilgrim's Fitness Plan — Regenerating the Body You Already Have is a 12-phase, 12-week guide built around a specific body in a specific place. It draws on Traditional Chinese Medicine, twelve wisdom traditions, and the simple fact that garden work is the original fitness. No gym required. Hands in soil. Feet on the Baltic path. The body learning again what it already knows.

It is not a wellness product. It is not a self-help manual. It is a testimony — lived first, published after.

What preceded it

Seven days before the train, I hewn seven pillars — one each morning, in the darkness before the city woke.

They were not planned. They arrived in sequence, each one possible only because the previous one had been completed. On the seventh day I looked back and they were standing — a complete set, structural, load-bearing. Wisdom in Proverbs 9 says she hewed her pillars — chatsevah in Hebrew — not built, not assembled, but cut from living stone by hand. That is what happened here.

The seventh pillar is Ehyeh asher Ehyeh — the name spoken from the burning bush. A verb, not a noun. Being in the act of being. I am a verb. Der Boden trägt. The ground holds.

This interior architecture is what the twelve weeks stand inside. Without it, the practice is exercise. With it, it is regeneration.

A dedication

This plan began, as most honest things do, in the place of loss.

Susi — you will recognise yourself here, though I have not used your name without your knowledge. What we built together, and what we could not hold together, is the ground this grew from. The seven pillars do not erase that. They stand because of it.

Pillar I was Unconditional Love. Not as sentiment — as structure. The kind that does not require the outcome to be what you hoped in order to remain what it is. That pillar was hewn on the night of the New Moon, in the dark, before I knew what would follow. It was the first one cut because it had to be first.

This plan belongs to everyone who needs it. It began with you.

This morning

My daughter Julika is ten years old. She was born on Easter. This morning she will walk with me to the bridge — she goes left to school, I go right to the train. We part there. I return for her birthday in a little over a week.

The bridge is a recurring image in this story. There is a lock on one of the bridges here with two names on it. The pylons are still in the water. The structure changed form but holds.

Day 7 of Navratri. Kalaratri — the dark night. She rides a donkey, carries a scimitar, bestows abhaya — fearlessness. Not the absence of fear. The condition on the other side of it.

The train is at 07:11. Brandenburg recedes. The Baltic coast approaches.

The feast begins today.

A Pilgrim's Fitness Plan — Gut Nisdorf 2026
Michel Garand | CC BY-SA 4.0
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