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Today’s Miles: 20.1

Total Miles: 2,791.5

Near Adorf, Germany – November 14, 2016

A string of windmills rise over the hills like giants. Each stretches into the sky on a long, tapered tower with red lights blinking from the top. Their blades, bigger than school buses, spin in the twilight, cutting the air with a slow, steady whoosh.

I walk underneath them along a quiet dirt road, listening to the blades spin overhead and searching for a quiet, hidden spot to camp.

The day went well. Cold, my breath froze in my beard until noon, but I got a great donut at a bakery, I saw two pretty churches on a hill, and the rust is almost off my legs. The muscles still ache, they almost always ache somewhere, but the stiffness is fading and the cracked, sharp pain that had me limping forward is almost gone.

A tractor rumbles past, its lights bright in the darkness as I step to the side and watch it roll by. It reaches a distsnt field and begins to work across it as I reach a forest and disappear off the road to find a hidden flat piece of ground. A bit of snow falls as I’m going to sleep. Or is it icy rain. I can’t tell, but I know the weather is shifting. The cold will break and warmer air will slip across the land, Autumn battling back Winter for a few days. That always brings rain.

I worry a moment, thinking about rain, about cold. Then I let it go and fall asleep. What will come, will come, and I am ready for it all, steady like windmills cutting through the air.