They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul’d be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there’s just a meanness in this world
These words took me through the deserted streets of Stolpe, a village on the banks of the Lower Oder Valley in eastern Germany, as I made good on a promise to myself that I was going to wake up early on the first day of our trip and run to Poland. At the edge of the village I crossed the bridge over the canal that led me onto the Stolpe Polder, part of the national park and the flat valley floor protected from the canal and the river by high dykes topped with pathways for hikers, bikers and birdwatchers drawn to this strange landscape.
It was early – around seven – but already the air was hot and heavy, the sky overcast and in the distance, to the east above Poland or perhaps even the Baltic, coloured a deep and disturbing red. I ran along the dyke, aware that apart from a couple of tiny figures working a field a couple of kilometres away, I had the entire polder to myself, sharing this flat and lonely landscape with the storks, the housemartins, the starlings and a startled golden oriole, flashing across the path in a burst of green and yellow.
Under a Grey Sky 