On the Longevity of Wonder

I stood on the Marienbrücke, high above the Pöllat Gorge, staring at the scene in front of me. The sun was warm on my face, but the air had turned sharp and I pulled my scarf snug at my neck. Clouds erased the last of the blue sky.

The first drops of rain fell just as I pressed the shutter one last time.

I reluctantly made my way off the bridge and down the hill. Half an hour later, I arrived at the village as the rain shifted to snow. I looked up at Neuschwanstein Castle, shrouded in mist, its towers glistening, as the first fine flakes turned large and began falling fast and furious.

I was frozen to the spot, not from the cold, but from the view.  

I was in a storybook.

I was a character in a fairy tale.

Growing up, our family of five lived with my grandmother in her 1000 square foot bungalow. Somehow, in those tiny rooms, we always made space for a jigsaw puzzle, squeezing our chairs around the small portable card table on the sun porch. Puzzle pieces lived everywhere—box lids, sheets of cardboard, the narrow edge of the table.

The puzzles always featured places far from our small world—fjords, alpine lakes, European villages. I learned to see the subtle color variations in the fragments: a sky in twenty shades of blue, a mountain edge that only made sense when the right piece fitted into place.

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My favorite puzzles – settled in my memory and as clear now as they were to my younger self -- were the scenes of Bavaria. Timbered houses, flowerboxes at windows, cobbled streets. And most of all…Neuschwanstein Castle.

When I was about four, our neighbors came back from a summer holiday and invited us over to see slides of their trip. My excitement was all consuming. They had a fancy camera, and they vacationed in faraway places while we camped 50 miles from our home in New Jersey.

When the time came, we all went across the street where they had set up a slide screen and projector. I sat cross-legged on the floor as the lights dimmed and the slides started, showing scenes of their recent trip to Yellowstone National Park. As the slides clicked in the carousel, I tilted my head up to gaze at the hotels they had stayed at (I had never stayed in a hotel), the colorful geyser pools, and Old Faithful spouting in all its glory.

About halfway through, something shifted.

I had seen these places in the puzzles on our card table.

And then, for the first time, I understood: it was real.

I looked around…did anyone else realize that these places weren’t just pictures on pieces in the puzzle box? That you could visit them? Vacation there?

I was embarrassed to say anything to my family as we walked home. But in the sunroom, I stopped and looked at the shelf of puzzles - ones that had been completed and were waiting for trade with friends, and others in line for their turn on the table.  I sat on the floor and took the boxes from the shelves one by one. I couldn’t read yet and didn’t know where these places were, but I looked at each picture with a growing sense of wonder. I yearned to see these places for myself.

The sorting began: castles reflected in lakes and moats in one pile, forests and seaside scenes in another. I wanted the castles. Where are they? Do princesses live there? Can I really visit them?

And then, last week, I was standing inside the 1,000-piece puzzle of my childhood.

It is no coincidence, I think, that one of the first places I added to my list of “must visits” on this road trip was the Romantische Strasse, or the romantic road. I carry my sense of wonder from the family puzzle table straight into the present.

And then to have snow! The storm and the castle were the perfect confluence of childhood wonder. There was almost a foot of snow that day and the next. I should have been worrying about salt on the roads. I didn’t think about it once.

Instead, I did the only thing possible. I went to my hotel room and sat outside on the balcony, a cup of tea in hand, taking in the view of the castle as the snow swirled around me in freezing temperatures. And I thought, not for the first time, how lucky I am. Not only to be here on this trip of a lifetime, but to have these things that still, after so many years, bring a sense of wonder into my life.

I used to be embarrassed by my love of snow. In a good storm, I become a child again—giddy, baking, staying outside as long as possible. Snow angels are not out of the question.

I am embarrassed no more.

After all, as we get older, it takes more work to find novelty. To understand what sparks unabashed joy. And the glow from those two days at Neuschwanstein is still with me. How’s that for some adult magic?

It’s been good to feel four years old again, but with the wisdom of age (and some creaky joints to go with it). Travel can do that. Serving forth new places, new cultures, new sights that take our breath away.

I have been thinking about the source of my childlike wonder. We don’t need something as exotic and unlikely as a four-month road trip in a 56-year-old car to feel wonder. As I think about Neuschwanstein Castle, I look back to my dawning realization in my neighbor’s living room that the puzzles were real places and understand that wonder comes not just from seeing extraordinary things, but from encountering the world without knowing how the picture will look when it’s complete. That’s rarer than we admit. And something worth striving for.

Two days ago, I was sitting at a café in the town square in Dinkelsbühl when I heard a strange clattering overhead. I looked up to see enormous white storks nesting on the rooftops, their wings cutting across the sky.

“Didn’t you know?” the server asked, smiling. “People come from all over to see them.”

I didn’t know.

And I was glad.

Because that is what I am beginning to understand on this trip—wonder doesn’t only live in the places we have dreamed about for years, the ones we have assembled piece by piece at a card table.

It also lives in the moments we never see coming. The snowstorm. The white storks nesting overhead. In the towns we didn’t research.

Wonder is the realization, again and again, that the world is far larger, and far more surprising, than we remember.

The puzzles of my childhood showed me that such places existed.

And now life is letting them reveal themselves—one piece at a time.

Susan

Blue Car Road Trip Miles: 1447

From the Blue Car Europe Series