Father and a stag

1982 father and I did one last hike together; in Rauris in the central range of the Salzburg province alps. Both of us did not have any serious hiking gear, so we just followed a side valley uphill, not even trying to climb a peak. Yes, it was fall, the days of Rauriser Malertage, a painters’ annual ‘convention’ – artists of all styles willing to react to sublime mountain nature, draw, sketch, or paint with an exchange of results in the evenings.

For a nature loving person that my father never ceased to be this was also the time to hear stags belling; no, no, he never was a hunter; his was not to listen to the creatures of mountains & forests in order to shoot them. His was just to listen, and maybe to see – if you managed to be so quiet and peaceful as not to shy those animals away. And I had never heard a stag belling, so my father wanted to present me with this experience, and we had found a pretext to stay off one of those informal evening meetings at the local Kirchenwirt. Well, it’s been 27 years now, and I can’t seem to remember if we actually heard a stag belling; I do remember a feeling of connectedness with my father that strikes me as a rare gift in hindsight; it took me a long time to realize just how much the two of us have in common, for better or worse; and this little story is definitely part of the better.

This is an excerpt from a piece of biographic fiction currently under construction as a part of the international network of National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo.

In case you're among those who always wanted to write that certain piece of prose, maybe an outright novel – come on in and join fun, excitement and the suspense if you manage to finish November as a 'winner' with 50,000 words written, no matter what.

If your Inner Editor is just getting the screaming fits – send him/her on a four weeks' vacation!

This is a blog here; there are editors and theorists: so there's a disclaimer to the excerpt above: 'sublime' would never ever have been used as a term for mountain landscapes by that fictional father.