I was very much an auslander during my years as an expat in Austria. Literally translated, I was an “outlander.” I had fine in-laws who were kind and generous, but I did not have friends, and I spent huge amounts of time alone. During those seasons, I covered sections of the Enns Valley, a broad glacier cut river bed surrounded by meadows and imposing granite peaks, on foot. Repeatedly.

Outlander is a funny word for someone who developed such a personal relationship with the surface of the land.

I gave up trying to make my home in small town Austria, and we settled on living in the U.S. For a while I stubbornly refused to visit for any extended period of time, dreading the return of that loneliness I’d felt while living there full time. But I had forgotten the land.

…it was spring, almost summer, and the meadows were so green.

On my last trip over, a trip to visit those same kind inlaws, it was spring, almost summer, and the meadows were so green. They were speckled with yellow and white flowers, and purple clover, and nearly sparkled under a sky that turned to rain almost every afternoon. We drove past the rolling hills that I used to cover on foot — either in practical walking shoes or on cross country skis in winter time. Watching the movie of these places roll by in the car window reminded me that while I did not love living in Austria, I was mad for the landscape.

The hay sheds were still off kilter. If they’d had names I’d have called out to them from the car, so familiar was each one. I saw the hill where I took my first fall on skis, and it was so small without snow. We passed the little uphill driveway into the Knodl Alm, a traditional restaurant that serves bread dumplings and sauerkraut. “Are you sure it’s not the Esel Alm?” asked my husband. He grew up here; he had lived in this region his entire life.

“No, I am absolutely certain that’s the Knodl Alm. I know it.”

Back at the turn-off is the awkward parking lot, and then you must go under the little railway bridge. From there, you can continue out to the round Odensee, a tiny blue-black lake. There is a gasthaus (a little restaurant), and in the back are the restrooms. You can walk through the restaurant in your boots or go around to the side door. It doesn’t matter — the owners are used to skiers and hikers taking a quick break there; they’ll come back to eat at some point.

There’s a little fishing hut on the edge of the lake, and when you race through the trees on skis the light slices on and off like a strobe. Out on the highway is a market where I stopped for drinks and snacks to fuel my wanderings.

A mile or so from the highway the hills turn up, just a little, and the trees are closer together. Just over that rise the meadow is flat as a mirror with not even the slightest tilt. Around that bend is a little bridge and an old-fashioned outhouse that is always so clean. A little further along is a place completely protected from the wind so that even on a bitter cold day you can stand and warm yourself, as long as the sun is shining.

I was very much an outsider, but not to the land.

There is the train station. A trail goes down and back up again where it crosses the creek on a little wooden bridge. There is a little cluster of farmhouses and a block of vacation rental units in a triangular apartment building. There’s a playground, another wide-open meadow, and a brook that’s lined with birch trees on both sides.

I didn’t know the people here at all. But the land, I could draw you a map of it entirely from memory, and it would show you where that icy spot is and where you should walk out onto the fishing dock. And just up this hill there’s a bench that backs up against a tractor barn, and that’s the place we should stop to eat our sandwiches.

Thirty kilometers of gently rolling hills, of flat meadows, of black and white forest. The only thing I really felt I knew here was this stretch of land. I was so happy to see it again. An outlander? No. I was very much an outsider, but not to the land. We would stop the car and go for a very long walk, and the land and I, we’d be friends again, picking up right where we left off.

This time, when I left that green, beautiful land behind, I was sorry to go.