Running the vineyards, Neckar River

At the end of a day of army life, I would veer my VW toward home, past the flower markets of Neckarsulm where cut roses piled up in every imaginable color, past the rounded hills of grapevines, flush and crazy with green, on through the valleys to Affaltrach where Karen waited with dinner. In the warm months, I’d look for a place to run, slipping on shorts in the car and a pair of white, cardboard-stiff Adidas. Finding an obscure truck road into a vineyard, I'd pull over, jump out and begin loping along through curved rows of vines, breathing in the soft notes of green leaves and the tumult of the terrain itself, worked up into scalloped hillsides.

Between the plants, glimpses of the horizon let me know I was well off the valley floor, up among the higher rows. I was always afraid of being chased off, which never happened, so I’d get back to my car grateful, sweaty and full of wonder.

The ‘71 Rieslings of the Neckar Valley were considered the best of the century through some amazing improvisations of rain, sun, soil and vine. To taste one was to enter into an agreement that you would never complain about anything again. Or at least until the next morning, when assignments were handed out in front of Battery B.