The former forest official Gerald Klamer hiked 6000 kilometers through the German forest to draw attention to its splendor – and its plight. A conversation about the happiness worth protecting, walking under the crown, standing, breathing.
Mr. Klamer, where can I get hold of you right now?
In Osterode, on the edge of the Harz.
And this is how much your stage is now?
Two hundred … twenty-two I think.
How cold are the nights out there?
The last two nights I was in a warm accommodation, where I was kindly accommodated, in a sustainably managed hotel and with the district forester in Lerbach. The night before I slept practically directly under the Brocken, at an altitude of almost 1000 meters. It was freezing cold.
But your sleeping bag can be minus 15 degrees, you wrote on your blog.
That was the sleeping bag I had with me in March. I changed my equipment in May and since then I’ve been using a very light sleeping bag that only weighs 700 grams. I figured I’d get through the last two weeks with that too.
Freezing
It’s a bit borderline, but I also have a down jacket with me, so I sleep with a jacket and sleeping bag, that works too.
In your cowboy camp, as you called it?
Cowboy camp is all in the open air. Once I have set up my tarpaulin, it no longer applies.
Did you walk all the stages, honestly? Or drove secretly in between?
No, no, everything on foot. Whenever I have appointments at a stage destination, I take a seat in a car to see something. But the next morning I always go from exactly where I arrived.
They hike to draw attention to the situation of the forest, its beauty and the threat. The media interest is great – also that of the people?
A lot of people get in touch with me. Just the day before yesterday I was hiking the afternoon with a lady who discovered me through a newspaper article. She came to the Harz from Hanover to ask me a lot of questions about the forest. I already have the impression that people take part in the fact that I hike for the forest.
In March you woke up at night from thirst.
It is like this: In the low mountain range there is a lot of forest. Streams that flow through the forest are usually so clean that you can drink from them with peace of mind. But I also wander through large agricultural areas, so of course you can’t just drink the water.
So what?
A good source of water is a cemetery. It usually has a water connection, and that’s where I am happy to take care of myself. In the lowlands, I rarely bought a bottle of water in the supermarket. But water is heavy, so I try to get by with as little as possible. And yeah, a couple of times it just didn’t work out. Then I just had a relatively thirsty night. But it’s not that bad either.
And eat?
I make cold meals and basically get my supplies from supermarkets that I pass by. Now in autumn the many fruit trees on the way were of course a good source of vitamins. Apples, pears, walnuts, plums.
What is your nutrition like?
Very easy. Muesli with baby powder in the morning – we usually don’t have real milk powder in our supermarkets. Add honey, peanut butter or chocolate cream as a supplement. 200 grams of chocolate at lunchtime, preferably nut chocolate. In the evening my standard is a mixture of oatmeal, peanuts, again baby powder and again chocolate cream. And water.
Pure calories.
I just consume a lot of calories when hiking.
Did you expect the weather to be like it is this year?
The spring was very wet and cold, I wasn’t exactly expecting that. But I was prepared enough to deal with it.
The summer was not as hot as one might have feared.
That was a real stroke of luck for the forest. The three summers before that were way too hot and way too dry. That summer was more or less normal in most regions. That gave the forest a little respite.
This year, nobody is closer to the forest than you. What is your impression – how is he doing right now?
Central Hesse, where I worked before the big hike, is a badly damaged region. In principle, there are no longer any intact spruce stands. I expected to see pictures like this everywhere on my hike. But that was not the case. There are real disaster regions like the Sauerland or the Harz Mountains. But then you also come to areas where you think: Oh, what is that? There aren’t any bark beetles here, the world is almost okay here.
The hiking forester
Gerald Klamer, 54 , gave up his job, his apartment in Marburg and his car in February and set off for a walk. After 25 years as a forest officer in Hesse, he wanted to get closer to the trees in order to point out the ailing condition of the forest due to climate change.
Most of the 6000 kilometers he has set out to do are now behind him. He walks an average of 30 kilometers a day, meets experts in the forest district, gets information and writes about it in his online diary www.waldbegeisterung.de.
Klamer reached the destination on Monday, November 8th. Then he arrives back in Marburg, where he started. If you want, you can walk the last kilometer through the forest with him. Meeting point: the traffic lights at Graf-von-Stauffenberg-Straße 6. The forester lived there until he left. ill
Where was that?
Tending to be more in southern Germany. In the three years of drought it has rained more than in the middle. It’s not that nothing happened, but a lot less.
That is not the rule. In your blog you report on different approaches to help the forest. Some say, for example in Saxony, that hunting is a key factor, others rely on natural regeneration, and still others on replanting. Which way is the best?
As is usually the case in life, it is a mixture and the solution varies depending on the region. In general, you can say that nature can do a lot and you don’t have to plant immediately in many places. But there are also areas like here in the Upper Harz, where there are no seed birches left to taper over the area. It is important to plant or sow early to ensure that there will not be 100 percent spruce again in the next generation of forests.
So rely on mixed forest.
Yes. The whole thing is interesting in terms of numbers. According to the federal government’s forest report, around 300,000 hectares have died so far, mainly due to the bark beetle, and the trees affected have of course been weakened by the drought. However, it is estimated that three times the area, i.e. three million hectares, would urgently need renovation. That means: The large-scale conifer monocultures must be developed into mixed forests. We have to do it with force. Even if we now have a respite: The next drought is sure to come, and then regions that have now got off relatively lightly will also be affected.
What about saving CO2?
That’s the basis, of course. The forest – not the wood – is a key factor here too. Some say that when it comes to CO2 storage, the wood used is the very best. That is not right. You have to know: 80 to 90 percent of the wood is processed into disposable products, packaging material, pallets, wood chips. These things are quickly burned again and release the CO2. Lumber that remains for 50 or more years unfortunately only has a small share. In contrast, standing forest stands permanently store CO2, and there we have great potential for improvement. The average wood supply in Germany is currently 300 cubic meters per hectare. But in companies that have decided to increase this stock, that can even be 500.
How do we get a supply of wood? Plant more?
No, that is only possible with less usage. This has been done consistently in the Lübeck city forest, with the most natural forest management system that we have in Germany. Since 1994, the amount of wood felled there has been halved. That brought in an enormous supply. Another number: the German forest currently stores around seven percent of climate-damaging CO2 emissions. If we come to the point of lowering emissions, the proportion that the forest absorbs also increases. But the local cooling function is even more important. Forest is a natural cooling system through evaporation – these are temperature differences in some cases up to ten degrees on hot summer days. That should be given much more consideration.
“Forest enthusiasm” is the name of your tour – did your enthusiasm last during the hike?
I am still excited about the forest. Natural forest is poignantly beautiful. It is also important to share this enthusiasm with other people. If you only spread negative messages such as “The forest is dying now and everything is very bad”, that only leads to frustration and in the end does not move anything at all. I would rather point out that there are so many beautiful things to see in the forest and that the forest as a whole will certainly not die with us. “Forest dieback 2.0” might be a flashy headline, but luckily it ignores reality.
What do you particularly like about the forest?
Ha! The variety, the absolute variety! Whether these are certain smells, whether that is the view into the treetops when I lie on my mat and set up my bed, the birds singing in spring, and game viewing as a big highlight.
How many photos do you estimate they took on your way?
Whoa … many. 2000? No, that is not enough. 222 days, around 50 pictures a day … closer to 10,000.
Your tour ends on November 8th at the starting point in Marburg. So what?
Then I have to sit down and write the book. It should appear in September next year, by Malik-Verlag. And I also want to give public lectures about my experiences, and then I have to develop them first.
Where will you live You gave up your apartment out of sheer enthusiasm for the forest.
Something new has arisen. My girlfriend will also be here in Germany, and then we will live together in Stuttgart.
Ah – your partner has not yet lived in Germany?
Well, she’s also a hiker who travels a lot. She had gotten up to a pretty big deal this year that didn’t quite work out. I don’t know if this is also interesting here.
Our readers will hate me if I say no now.
All right then. My girlfriend has a PhD in agricultural biology. She worked on a project in Nepal in 2015 and only barely escaped the great earthquake there. Then she thought about her life and decided that she doesn’t want to have a normal work career, but rather do what she likes to do best – hiking. Around the world.
Admirable.
This year she had decided to hike from Stuttgart to Nepal, where the idea was born. It has reached the Carpathian Mountains, and Romania still has a lot of bears and wolves, but also a lot of sheep that are guarded by keen dogs. They are not always under particularly good control …
Oh dear.
She was surrounded by ten dogs and bitten on all sides, but she was still lucky. Of course, she had to stop the hike first, but she recovered relatively quickly. Now, this Friday, we’ll meet again. She then runs with me for the last nine days.
What a nice finale! If you both meet on the last stages – should you bring a bottle of water to quench your thirst?
Haha! We are now in the low mountain ranges, where the water situation is rather relaxed. But of course we are always happy about chocolate.
