In Search of Your Own Private Idaho
08/21/1994
Mountain Lion: An Unnatural History of Pumas and People
08/01/1995
This essay was published in Sojourner, 1995.
An Essay to Mark the 50th Anniversary of the End of World War II.
“From the upland gardens of Dachau Palace, the city of Munich, where I was born in 1948, unfurls like a scroll along a flood plain at the foot of the Alps. The script of its steep rooflines and Gothic trim is illegible at this distance, but the bold, vertical dash of the modem Olympia tower punctuates the sky. Below it, smudged by haze, is a scribble of small hills. This is the Schunberg, the rubble mountain. 11 was built from bombing debris, shoveled onto trucks and a little railroad constructed expressly for the purpose. The mounds were covered with clay for waterproofing, then with canh for parks. Meadows and groves now grace them. ‘Everything I owned is buried there,’ said my mother, pointing, as we stood on the heights of Dachau.”
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