Do you remember a story about a magic pebble, thrown into the water on the last day of my last cycling tour? The pebble, which was supposed to flow through the Straits of Magellan around Tierra del Fuego until the end of the world? Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, that pebble no longer floats. Now it lies nicely in the pocket of my down-filled jacket. Where did it come from? From the beach. I took it from a cold, rocky shore, where it lay among thousands of other gray pebbles waiting and longing to be picked up by someone, who could put it in their pocket and warm it up in their hands.
I had a dream. I dreamed about that place. It was cold, cloudy and windy. There was a penguin walking along the beach. It had something in its beak. A small pebble. I ran to him, and perhaps even shouted something. The penguin flapped its wings as if to rise above the ground, but instead moved awkwardly, bent his black and white body and, trudging ridiculously, moved quickly towards the sea. I shouted again. Something small fell to the ground. The penguin jumped into the water and disappeared beneath the rising wave. I walked closer. It was the same place. I looked down. It was the same pebble. I bent down to pick it up and throw it back into the sea, but I could not move it. I knelt down, I tried to push and finally I got up and kicked it, but the pebble did not move an inch.
The wind intensified. I heard bird voices behind me. I looked back. “I saw a transparent tree full of migratory birds, in the blue, cool morning, because there was still some snow in the mountains”
I returned for a pebble. I’m taking it back. Where? To home. To close the tangled thread of the road. Confusing, jagged. Perhaps the end of it was somewhere in the middle and I missed it? And maybe I will have to go back to Alaska? Who said that one always needed to go forward? This time I will try to go back. I do not believe in the linearity of time. A great space lies before us, a paradise often lies behind. And once we get there we will get drunk. On a green meadow, under the blue sky. Where the happiness waits, where a gift is waiting for us.