​Today’s Miles: 29.8

Total Miles: 1,854.8

Stenbäcken, Sweden – September 25, 2016

Moss, dirt, and dead leaves fill the cracks between the piled stones. Trees stand tall on all sides. From the rise of land, I hear the highway stretching through the valley below.

Time has overrun the place. The wooden walls rotted away long ago. The stone ones crumble into piles that the ground swallows back. Without a sign and a narrow path, I might have walked by it and took it for the ruins of an old house or a farm wall, but it was a fortress once.

I climb over a break in the stones and trace the outline of walls with my eyes. It is hard to imagine the place like it might have been with stone walls, wooden palisades on top, a humble refuge to flee into during troubled times.

I stand inside the ring of stones for a few minutes, listening to the cars on the highway, imagining what the walls looked like, wondering what scenes played out over this small piece of earth and what the players would think now, staring at their broken ruins fading, almost forgotten, into the forest.