An hour north by car, I arrived at my cousin's old farmhouse. It's one big, old building, and traditional (should be - it's three hundred years old): one half is the barn, and the other half is the dwelling. The barn has been converted to my cousin's woodshop, but the house is still mostly authentic, with some nice maple cabinetry and furniture added recently.

The storm raged on - quite routine for this time of year, I was told.

In Northern Germany, pigs are considered to be good luck, and show up in everyday conversation, referring to the weather. "Haben Sie Schwein mit den Wetter." Have pig-with-the-weather - meaning they hope the weather is mild and favorable.

Severe and nasty weather, however, is known as Schweinenwetter, or "pig-weather." After that storm blew out, a couple of days later, I asked my cousin if that was pig-weather. "Oh, no," he said, "you won't see pig-weather while you're here." God, I hope I never do.

I had been out the next day, jet-lag held at bay by a bottle of red wine, and seen the terrain. This is the area where the venerable Holstein cattle come from (although I didn't see any during my two-week visit - all in barns for the winter), and the fields, bordered by legally-protected hedgerows, produce huge crops of canola and hay in the summer. In the midst of the fields are massive, ancient oaks - also protected. One of them caught my attention, and I was glad it did - the storm continued, and the following day, that oak had exploded, been torn apart by the wind. I felt a thrill of awe, knowing that I had arrived on the last day of that five-hundred year old oak - and witnessed it.

Adjacent to some of the fields were beech forests, large and small (as noted on the signs: Grossbuchwald and Kleinbuchwald) - one was across the road from my cousin's house, set back behind a hayfield. My cousin had told me that among the beeches and birches were firs, indicating sandy soil, and that the sand was used, long ago, for making glass. When walking through the woods, one might still encounter old, broken pieces of it.

A few days later, after a visit to Lübeck, to Amsterdam, and to Denmark, I took a day to relax from traveling and went for a walk in that beech wood. Just down the road was a little lane leading into it, and along this I went.

It was a bit after lunch; the day was gloomy. Clouds all day, but no rain. January in Northern Europe. I shouldered my canteen and walked along the edge of the wood until the lane turned into it.

I stooped under the trees and stirred the leaf-litter, finding a few beech seeds. Much later, I realized what a trove that was, and how fortunate: squirrels abound in these woods, dining extensively on the easily-shelled and tasty beech seeds, each about as big as a date seed. How could it be that they missed these few, so easily found by a non-adept? In January, at that (I have two little beech trees growing from those smuggled seeds).

As soon as I entered the wood, I saw a herd of red deer. They don't move around in small, family groups like the white-tailed deer I am accustomed to, but in large herds - this one was fifty or more. And they're hefty, almost as big as elk.

One of them was most pronounced: an albino. I was still fifty yards off when they spotted me and moved down the muddy track into the woods.

I followed them for a while, catching glimpses through the trees when they got too far ahead, until their tracks led off the lane and down toward a lake. By this time, I couldn't see them at all, but their tracks were a trampled swath nearly ten feet wide, so if I were determined to follow them, it would have been easy.

I continued down the lane, which met back up with the road in another mile, covering about five miles in all.

One could see right through the woods - the stout, smooth gray trunks of the beeches towering high, with the ground completely covered by their raw sienna leaves. Here and there stood some white birches, or wrinkled bark of firs. Occasionally a maple, but mostly beeches. Very few shrubs. On the way back from encountering the road, I walked down to the lake.

While standing and writing all this down, I was startled by an interloper - a wild boar went walking by, confident and at ease. My cousin didn't believe this - he's lived there his entire life, and never has seen a wild boar - they're so discreet and introverted.

I suppose I had an advantage - I had been standing there for ten minutes, and was as still as a tree. The boar just didn't notice me.

It began to get dark - it was only three in the afternoon, but completely cloudy, and at this northern latitude in winter…

I realized that I didn't have any food with me, I had no flashlight, and was off the trail in unfamiliar woods, and it was getting dark. I shook my canteen - worse, I was running low on water. Miles to go before I sleep, indeed. I should head back to the farmhouse, and a dinner of soup, bread, and wine, and a story about the boar for my cousin.

I began to make my way up the hill toward the lane. Having become aware of my circumstances, I realized that I was hungry, it was darker than I thought, and I might have to ration my last swigs of water. I only had about four kilometers to go, but darkness would rapidly descend.

And then -

The sun, close to setting, dropped below the cloud cover and streamed into the woods. The beech trunks gleamed in the light, and the forest floor was light with a golden glow as the sun washed over the beech leaves. A rustle of wind.

All was quiet.

At that moment, I understood how stories came to life: Beowulf, King Arthur, and all the other European mythologies, right up to Mole and Water Rat in The Wind in the Willows. The stories were born in a beech glade just such as this, in the dead of winter when some were not to survive, and darkness descended, food was scarce…

And my own story would be born among those beeches, too. I hurried back to the house to begin writing it.