Sitting with a morning coffee at the kitchen table, the view through the window is across the hedge and onto the neighbours property, where their collection of logs stand in neat piles. The piles grow and shrink, depending on the time of the year or the opportunities that come with a violent storm that shakes the forests beyond the edge of the village. They are the domain of grey wagtails and black redstarts. Today, they are covered in frost.
It is one of those days. The grass, the limbs of trees and the roof tiles of the village houses are dusted in the white. Spruce trees stand tall against a grey sky. The mist settles in around late morning, and with not a breath of wind to shift it you know that this is where we are. This is the weather for today and nothing will change before darkness falls in mid-afternoon, as if we’ve collectively taken a decision to hunker down and wait to see how things might go tomorrow.
We are what the Germans call Zwischen den Jahren. Between the years. The windows and front gardens of the village houses remain illuminated with Christmas decorations. The supermarket is selling discounted decorations with displays of sparklers and Sekt ahead of New Year’s Eve. It is the week in the year where everything seems to slow to a crawl, like a row of Sundays one after the other. It is a good time, then, to look back at what has gone before and to dream of what might be to come.
Our walk is a familiar one, even in the mist. We cross the field on our way to the pond and the church and into the Schlosspark. The old palace is now apartments, and its gardens and forests running down towards the railway line and the station are open to all. We follow its paths and trails, across frosted fields and passing by trees that we have named over the years, frozen ponds criss-crossed with the footprints of ducks and then back through the village to our little yellow house.
It is the most minute of adventures. Our usual walk. But the joy of being outside, however cold, misty and bleak the day, is in seeing places we know so well as if we are discovering them for the first time. It is a reminder that for all our travels and new experiences, there is something very important about following the same trail enough times that you can spot the small differences.
And as we walk between the years along familiar tracks, we look back at the past twelve months and all the places we have walked. The Welsh coastline and to the top of a mountain in the shadow of Yr Wyddfa. Along the Baltic shore, crossing the border between Poland and Germany and then back again. Following a gorge through the Azorean forests on an island in the middle of the Atlantic. Threading our way through the rhododendron forest on the edge of the Himalayas. And here, in Fläming, where the rhododendrons don’t grow so tall, but their very presence reminds us of other places, far away.
We look back and then we look forward. Between the years. Where shall we walk next?
If you are fortunate enough to have some time and space in this period between Christmas and New Year, you might be interested in this short film that was made by Sudin KC, a documentary filmmaker and photographer, for Pahar Trust Nepal. The film very beautifully explains why PTN exists and the work that is being done. We will be sharing some more stories from our recent trip to Nepal over the coming weeks and months on The Winding Trail, but in the meantime it would mean a lot to us if you would consider supporting PTN in their work to improve standards of education, health and sanitation in the country, and give more children safe spaces to learn.
One thing from Nepal we have recently published on the website is our guide to Pokhara, with some of our favourite places to eat and drink, recommendations about where to stay, which trekking company to use and things to see and do while you are there. The other piece we published since the last newsletter is Mountains in the mist, a long read about the Kiso valley in Japan, following a stretch of the Nakasendō trail before discovering the birthplace of forest-bathing, where the five sacred trees of Kiso still grow.
Thanks as always for reading, and if there is someone you know that might enjoy what we do, please share away! Here’s to 2026, and more adventures beyond the front door,
Paul & Katrin
Wiesenburg, December 2025
Explore all our writing and photography: The Winding Trail
