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Today, on the 5th of November I begin my report.

I will write everything down as accurate as I can.

But I don't even know if today is really the 5th November.

During the past winter I lost a few days.

I can't even tell you the weekday.

But I think that this isn't very important.

I rely on sparse notes.

Sparse, because I never thought to write this report,

and I'm afraid that much is different in my memory than I had experienced it.

So all reports could be very vague.

I don't write for the joy of writing.

It has just happened that I need to write,

if I do not want to lose my mind.

It's no ne here, who could think of and care for me.

I'm all alone, and I have to try

get through the long dark winter months.

I have taken this task upon me, because it should prevent me

from staring into the twilight and to get afraid.

Because I fear. From all sides fear creeps up to me,

and I don't want to wait until it reaches and overpower me.

I will write until it gets dark.

And this new unfamiliar work should make my head tired,

empty and sleepy.

I don't fear the morning. Only the long dusky afternoons.

I write on the back of old calendars

and on aged business papers.

The paper comes from Hugo Rüttlinger, a great collector and hypochondriac.

Actually with Hugo this report should begin,

because without his acquisitiveness and hypochondria, I wouldn't sit here today.

I probably would not be alive at all.

Not until three clock we reached the hunting lodge.

After a snack, Hugo just started to doze off,

Louise suggested to him to go with her again to the village.

Come on!

We don't stay long, very early in the morning we go hunting.

The car key is inserted, if you want to meet us.

Come on! - Yes.

Where is Luchs? Luchs?

The dog stays her! The stupid dog never obeys.

Luchs? Luchs, come on!

Heel!

Come Luchs!

- Heel! - Don't be so tight.

Luchs, if you don't want to go, then you stay up here. Go back!

Go! Go!

At nine o'clock I decided to go to bed.

I locked the door and took the key with me to my room.

Well, Luchs? What's going on?

The two had to remained in the village. I was very surprised about it.

Hugo loathed the short inn beds.

And he had never been so ruthless,

leaving me alone overnight.

Then I decided to go with Luchs to the village.

I couldn't explain what had happened.

I hardly noticed how cool and damp the canyon was,

because I was pondering about what had become of Rüttlingers.

Maybe Hugo had suffered a heart attack.

As it is with hypochondriacs, we didn't take his state seriously.

I sped up and sent Lynx ahead.

I forgot to think of my hiking boots

and stumbled awkwardly over the sharp stones behind him.

Luchs! Luchs?

Luchs? Luchs, what is it?

What do you have? Did you hurt yourself?

Have you bitten on your tongue?

Luchs come!

Come on!

Luchs, what is it?

Come on!

Then I heard loud knocking and looked around before I realized

that it was my own heartbeat, that rang in my ears.

My heart had been feared, before I knew it.

Hesitantly I tried it again.

And again rested my hand on the glass on a window.

Suddenly I realized what had unconsciously tormented me all the time

the road was completely empty.

Someone had have beaten alarm long time ago.

It would have been natural

the curious village people had accumulated in front of the wall.

Even if none of them had discovered the wall,

Hugo and Louise must have seen it.

It was more surprising to me that I couldn't see any people.

I tried it three more times and convinced me that there was three meters in front of me

something invisible, smooth, cool, was

that prevented me from going on.

I thought of a hallucination, but I knew that it was nothing of the kind.

I had my problems to accept and understand

the terrible, invisible thing.

The first little farmstead, really just a Chaste

was just around the next bend.

At last I could see the Chaste.

She laid very quiet in the sunlight. A peaceful, familiar picture.

Sorry! Sorry, I

Come Luchs. Come on!

We were caught in a bad situation, me and Luchs,

and at that time we didn't know how bad it was.

But we weren't completely lost because there were two of us.

It couldn't be true, this kind of things just don't happen.

And if they happened, not in a small village in the mountains,

not in Upper Austria and not in Europe.

I know how ridiculous this idea was,

but I thought exactly like that, so I won't conceal it.

I woke up at six clock when the birds began to sing.

Although I had hardly moved Luchs knew that I was awake

and came to my bed to greet me.

Suddenly it seemed to me quite impossible to survive this fine day in May.

Same time, I knew that I had to survive it

and that there was no escape for me.

I had to be completely silent and simply survive it.

It wasn't the first day of my life, I had to survive like this.

The less I resisted, the more bearable it would be.

I do not remember, what I did that morning.

Maybe the following hours were so tough, that I had forget them.

Maybe I was in anesthesia. I do not remember.

I came back at 2 o'clock in the afternoon,

when I went with Luchs through the gorge.

This time I was better equipped. Also Hugo binoculars I had with me.

If the man at the well was dead, and I could no longer doubt that,

all the people in the valley had to be dead, and not only the people.

The Animals as well.

If that was the death, it has come very quick and gently

on an almost loving way.

Perhaps it would have been wiser to go with Hugo and Louise into the village.

Luchs!

What's going on? Luchs?

Come, Luchs!

Luchs!

Come.

Yes, come on.

In the meantime it had become clear to me

that this cow was a blessing, but also was a great burden.

Such an animal wants to be fed and milked and calls for a sedentary Lord.

I was the Owner and the Prisoner of a cow.

Of course, I also thought of the cow.

When I was very lucky, she was expecting a calf.

But I couldn't rely on that.

I only could hope my cow would give milk as long as possible.

I still thought of my situation as a temporary state

or at least tried to do so.

I thought of a name for my cow and named her Bella.

Actually, she didn't need any name.

She was the only cow in the forest.

Perhaps the only cow in the country.

Until tomorrow, Bella.

Ten days had passed, and nothing had changed.

For ten days I had drugged me with work, but the wall was still there,

and none had come to get me.

I had no choice to face the reality.

I could kill myself or could try to dig under the wall,

what probably would have been only a toilsome kind of suicide.

And of course I could stay here and try to stay alive.

To think seriously about suicide, I was not young enough.

The thought of Luchs and Bella kept me from thinking about that.

Thanks to Hugo's welfare I owned suppllies for the whole summer,

a home, wood for life and a cow.

I also intended to check the clocks daily

and swab each days from the calendar.

This seemed very important to me.

I wanted no change in my life.

I do not know why I do this.

It is almost an inner compulsion, that drives me to do this.

Maybe I'm afraid if I could otherwise

I would slowly cease to be a human,

and soon would crawl around dirty and stinky

and emit unintelligible sounds.

Not that I was afraid of becoming an animal that would not be very bad.

But a human never can be an animal,

he falls over the animal into an abyss.

I don't want this happens to me.

Lately my biggest fear is about that.

And this fear let me write my report.

On 30 May, it rained all day a warm, fertile rain

which forced me to stay in the hut, if I did not want to be soaked.

That evening the cat came to my house.

So we were four. The cow, the cat, luchs and me.

I fancied Luchs the most.

Soon he wasm't just my dog, he was my friend as well.

My only friend in a world of trouble and loneliness.

It's okay, Luchs.

Although I was captivated by Bella to the cabin,

I wanted ot try to look around a little in the area.

I remember a way that led to a higher hunting lodge,

and from there down into the opposite valley.

That's where I wanted to go.

Luchs! Heel!

- Wait, Luchs!

Now I had all the valleys researched, which I could reach

on just a couple of days.

I could ascend to the pasture and overlook the country from there,

but further into the mountain range I couldn't go.

Of course they could find me, when thers was no wall over there.

Yes, I had to assume that they should have have found me in the end.

I could quietly sit at home and wait.

But again and again I felt driven to,

to do something about the uncertainty.

At one o'clock noon I rested myself.

The forest laid misty in the midday sun

and warm clouds ascented to me.

It was much quieter now than at the moonlight night,

so as the forest was sleeping under the yellow sun.

A bird of prey was flying hive above in circles.

Luchs was sleeping with twitching ears

and the great silence sank like a bell above me.

I wished to sit here forever

in the heat, the light,

with the dog on my feet and the birds high above.

When I had to go again, I regreted it

and very slowly I turned into the creature

which didn't belong into a human,

with kinky thoughts and who buckled the branches with his clumsy shoes

and went on a bloody hunt.

It strikes me that I've never recorded in my diary

when I shot a deer.

Now I remember also that it simply disgusted me to write it down.

It was already enough, that I had to do it.

I called the little cat Pearl, because it was so white and bright.

In a few weeks I realized that pearl, the ugly little thing

was about to transform into a beauty.

Pearl was a small miracle

but even then I knew that she was born in the wrong place.

A long-haired, white cat in the middle in the forest is doomed to early death.

She had no chance.

Maybe that was the reason I like her so much.

When I think back to the first summer

I had more concerns about my animals

than about my desperated situation.

With the disaster I lost great responsibility

but gained a new burden, without knowing it at this time.

When I finally released my situation

I was no longer able to change it anything.

I don't think my behavior came from weakness or sentimentality.

I just followed a drive, which I couldn't handle

when I didn't want to destroy myelf.

I don't know what is dishonorable about

to carry the burden of an animal

and to die like one in the end.

I don't even know what honor is.

To be born and to die is not honorable.

It happens to every creature and also means nothing.

On 20 July I started with the hay.

It took me three weeks to harvest the crop.

I blamed not only the changing weather

my clumsiness and physical weakness were to blame as well.

I suffered a severe attack of discouragement

and clearly recognized for the first time, which blow had hit me.

I don't know what would have happened if the responsibility of the animals

hadn't forced me to do the necessary things.

Very reluctantly I remember of this time.

It took me 14 days until I could finally bring himself back

and began to live again.

The autumn always was my favorite season

even I never felt physically well.

During the day I was pretty tired.

At night I lay for hours in a troubled doze

and dreamed confused and lively than usual.

The Fall disease didn't spare me in the forest.

But the desease appeared moderated.

Maybe I didn't have time to notice it more accurate.

Luchs was very exhilarated and happy,

but a stranger wouldn't probably have noticed any difference.

He was almost always cheerful.

I have never seen him more than three minutes grumpy.

He just couldn't resist, not to be happy.

And the life in the forest was a constant lure for him.

Sun, snow, wind, rain,

everything was a cause for excitement.

I never could stay sad very long next to Luchs.

It was almost shameful, how happy it made him to be with me.

Perhaps the human owes his megalomania to the dog.

Sometimes I thought there had to be something special about me

when I saw how happy Luchs was to be with me.

Of course there never was something special about me.

Luchs was like all dogs simply addicted people.

Yes, you're my Luchs. Yes.

Good Boy.

Sometimes when I'm alone traveling in the forest in the winter time

I talk to Luchs as I did before.

I don't even know that I do it,

until something startles me and I fall quiet.

I turn my head and catch sight of the glimmer of a reddish brown coat.

But the path is empty, bare shrubs and wet stones.

It doesn't surprise me that I still can hear the branches crackling behind me

Where else should his little dog soul haunt as on my track?

It's a friendly ghost, and I'm not afraid of it.

Luchs, nice, good dog my dog.

Probably only my poor head makes the sound of your footsteps,

the glimmer of your coat.

As long as I exist, you'll follow my trail , hungry and yearning,

as I watch myself hungry and eagerly invisible tracks.

On 27 October fell the first snow.

The onset of winter lasted only a few days.

After that came the foehn and licked the young snow from the mountains.

It became uncomfortably warm,

and the wind blew night and day snarling at the little house.

I slept badly, listening to the roaring of the stags,

which descended during the rutting season from the heights.

Both cats pulled it out in the warm, damp forest.

I lay awake and worried about pearl.

The roaring of the stags sounded sad, threatening and sometimes almost desperate.

I just hoped the foehn would not last too long

and the winter would finally bring us a little rest.

The foehn really lasted only three days,

just long enough to kill pearl.

Pearl was buried,

and the foehn died overnight, as if it had fulfilled his task.

I have not forgotten pearl.

Her death was the first loss, I suffered in the forest.

Once, it must have been the first winter,

I saw a fox standing by the stream.

I could have shot him. I carried the gun with me.

But I did not.

Pearl died because one of their ancestors was a breeding Angora cat.

From the beginning she was designed as a victim.

Should I punish this beautiful vivid fox?

Pearl had happened an injustice.

But this injustice was also done to their victims.

Should I pass it on to the fox?

The only being in the woods that can do really right or wrong, am I.

And only I can practice mercy.

Sometimes I wish this burden of the decision would not lay on me.

But I am a human being. And I can only think and act like a human.

Just the Death will set me free.

When I think of winter, I always see the tired white fox standing by the stream.

A lonely, adult animal, which walks his predetermined path.

It seems this picture is important for me.

As it stands as a sign for something else.

But I can't recognize its meaning.

So.

Yes, my Bella.

Yes, you are beautiful.

Bella had become chubby again,

but I still couldn't know if she expected a calf.

After all, what we have experienced together,

Bella has become more than my cow,

a poor, patient sister, which handles her destiny with more dignity than I do.

At night I could hear the cold.

I burned a lot of wood, but I shivered and could not sleep.

Sometimes a piece of wood crackled and went out again,

and I felt sick.

I knew the reason was that I had to kill again and again.

I imagined what a person may feel, who liked killing.

I did not succeed.

I got a goose flesh on my arms

and my mouth became dry in disgust.

Thereto you had to be born, I guess.

I could bring myself to do it as quick and clean as possible,

but I would never get used to it.

For a long time I lay awake in the darkness,

and thought of the little heart

which froze above me in the chamber to a lump of ice.

After the severe cold a wave of damp and warm Air closed in.

Bella became restless, and I had to check on her ten times a day.

On 11 January Bella was bleeding a little.

It was after the evening feeding,

and I decided to set me up in the barn for the night.

Come on, Bella!

Come on, Bella, come on!

So much had happened in the recent past.

Pearl had been killed, a little bull was born,

deer were frozen, and the predators had had a fat winter.

I myself had a lot of excitement behind me and now I was tired.

And when I closed my eyes, I saw the snow mountains on the horizon,

white flakes, which sank on my face

in a large, bright silence.

There were no thoughts, no memories,

just the great, silent light snow.

I knew that this imagination for a lonely human was dangerous,

but I couldn't find the strength to to fight against it.

Luchs didn't let me long in peace.

Again and again he came and nudged me with his nose.

Sighing I got up and went to my daily work.

Now Luchs is no longer my friend and guardian.

And the desire to enter into the white, painless silence

is sometimes very heavy.

I have to pay attention to myself and be stricter than I was before.

Luchs was my sixth sense.

Since he is dead, I feel like an amputee.

Something is missing and it will always be.

I don't just miss him at the hunting and tracking search

It's not that alone.

The worst thing is that I really feel alone without Luchs.

The question of emigration to the pastures occupied me from day to day.

This task seemed terribly painful,

even if I took only the bare essentials

with me and lived babaric on the mountain pasture.

After I realized that I had long ago decided to move,

when I saw the green meadows of Alp the first time,

I became more quiet.

And on 25. May came the day of farewell from the cabin.

The road was very well maintained, but it still took us four hours

to reach the pasture.

It was about noon. I was completely exhausted.

Less of physical exertion more from the nervous tension.

Something new started. I didn't know what would that be.

But my homesickness and concern of the future slowly faded away.

I began to like the pasture, strange and dangerous.

But like everything strange, full of secret allurements.

It was a strange feeling, to look over a wide area,

without mountains and trees nearby.

And it wasn't immediately pleasant and liberating.

My eyes had to get used to the length,

after a year that I spent in a narrow valley.

While I was on the mountain pasture, I did not take notes.

I counted the days,

but I didn't notice important events such as the hay harvest.

But the memory of this time has remained fresh,

and it's not hard for me to write about it.

The summer scent, the thundershower

and the star glittering evenings I will never forget.

For the first time in my life I was appeased.

Not satisfied or happy, but appeased.

It was as if a big hand has stopped the clock in my head.

Sometimes my thoughts confuses me

Back then in the second summer, i didn't release it.

The boundaries were strictly drawn.

It's difficult for me

to distinguish between my earlier and my new alter ego when I'm writing.

My new alter ego, of which I'm not sure

that it slowly won't be absorbed by a larger We.

But even then the transformation started.

The mountain pasture was to blame.

In the buzzing silence under the big sky it was almost impossible to

to remain a isolated me.

A small, blind, stubborn life,

which didn't want to fit in the large community.

Once it had been my pride and joy, to live such a life.

But on the mountain pasture it suddenly seemed to me very pathetic and ridiculous.

An inflated nothing.

On 16. October since I got back from the pasture,

I regularly made notes again.

Almost throughout October the weather was beautiful.

Now I used the favorable time and doubled my wood stock.

At All Saints' it became suddenly warm, and I knew

that this could only initiate the winter.

On 10. December I find a strange note:

"Time goes by so fast."

I don't remember that I wrote this note.

I don't know what occurred on that 10. December

and let me write below "Fresh Snow" the words "collected hay":

"Time goes by so fast"

Did the time really go by that fast?

I can't remember and can't report about that.

It's not true at all. The time seemed to pass very quickly only to me.

I think the time doesn't move and I move in it.

Sometimes slow and sometimes at breakneck speed.

I do something, things are driving, and I forget the time.

And then, suddenly, the time is moving again.

I'll have to get used to it. To its indifference and omnipresence.

Since Luchs is dead, I feel that very cleary.

I sit at the table, and the time stands still.

I can't see, smell or hear it,

but it surround me on all sides.

Its silence and stillness is terrible.

Basically, these thoughts are entirely without meaning.

I regret the animals and the people,

because they were thrown in their lifes without being asked.

Maybe people are more regrettable,

because they have just as much intellect,

to defend themselves against the natural course of things.

This has made them angry and desperate and a bit unlovable.

It would have been possible to live differently.

There is no rational emotion as love.

Love makes the life of the lovers and the beloved ones more bearable.

We had just recognize in time

that this was our only option.

Our only hope for a better life.

For an infinite army of the dead

we missed the only possibilty.

Again and again I have to remember.

I can't understand why we had to follow the wrong path.

I just know that it's too late.

This fall a white crow has emerged.

She always flies a part behind the others

and settles itself on a tree which her companions avoid.

I don't understand why the other crows don't like her.

For me she is a very beautiful bird.

But she is abominable for their own kind.

A sad absurdity, it should not be.

A white crow.

She remain seated, until the great swarm departed,

and then I bring her a little food.

She can't know why she is ejected.

She knows no other life.

She will always be ejected and lonely,

so that she is less afraid of the people as of their black brothers.

Every day I wait for the white crow and attract her.

And she looks at me attentively with her reddish eyes.

I can do very little for her.

My waste may extend a life that should not be extended.

But I want that the white crow lives, and sometimes I dream

that there is a second one in the forest and the two will find each other.

I don't believe it but I wish it.

Step by step I began to forget my own past

and grow into a new order.

Until the weather really improved, it became May.

Two years had passed in the forest and it struck me

that I almost never thought about the possibility to bee found.

I decided to hit the mountain pasture very soon.

In June I was finally ready to get used to the mountain pasture.

But it was never like last year.

That first summer on the pasture was gone forever.

I didn't want to make a weaker recurrence

so I decided to curb my expectations.

But the Alm made it easy for me.

She had closed before me and showed me a strange face.

Often I sat on the bench and looked out over the meadow like a year ago.

It wasn't different than back then and it smelled just as sweet,

but I never had the same delight again.

I took no more big trips,

because I already had found my borders last summer.

It doesn't matter to me, where the wall was.

That summer, I completely forgot that Luchs was a dog and I a human.

I knew it, but there was no meaning of a seperation.

Luchs had changed too.

Since I dealt with him so much,

he was quiet and didn't seem to worry all the time,

I could dissolve into thin air as soon as he walked away for just five minutes.

When I think about it today, I think

this was his only fear of his dog's life:

to be left alone.

I had learned a lot as well

and understood almosts every meanings of his movements and sounds.

Now finally a tacit understanding prevailes between us.

I wore Luchs to the hut

and put him on the bench.

He ​​had suddenly become small and light.

And then suddenaly I heard from far away Bella's roar.

Bella roared in fear.

I tried to calm her down.

Only then I noticed the man again.

I knew he had to be dead.

He had been such a big target, I couldn't miss him.

I was glad that he was dead.

I would have been hard to accept to kill an injured man.

And I couldn't have let him alive.

Or could I? I don't know.

I didn't want him to leave him on the lawn.

Not next to the dead bull and in the innocent weed.

So I grabbed him by the legs and dragged him to the vantage point.

and let him roll downhill.

I made a grave for Luchs this evening.

I digged a deep pit, put Luchs into it,

covered him with earth and laid grass over it.

And then I was very tired.

So tired like never before.

Then I sat down on the bench and waited for the long night.

It became a bright starry night,

and the cold wind fell down from the rocks.

But I was colder than the wind and didn't freeze.

At first light I got up and left with Bella the mountain pasture.

The next day I did my usual work again.

The October came, and I harvested potatoes and fruit.

The stray had to be mowed, but that only lasted one week.

And finally I gave up my senseless escape, physically beaten and broken,

and my mind was free.

I want to know why the strange man killed my animals.

I'll never know, and maybe it's better that way.

Now I'm completely calm.

I see a little bit further.

I see that this is not the end yet.

Everything goes on.

Stier, Pearl and Luchs won't be here again.

But something new is approaching, I can't deny it.

The memory, the grief and the fear will remain

and the hard work as long as I live.

Today, 25. February, I finish my report.

There is no sheet of paper left.

It is now about five clock in the evening and it's already so bright

that I can write without a lamp.

The crows have risen and are screaming and circling above the forest.

When they are no longer visible,

I'll go into the glade and feed the white crow.

She is waiting for me.

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