The Linden Tree Path

It’s strange, the way memory works. You can forget entire days from last week, yet remember a golden hour from years ago like it’s etched into your soul. It’s been seventeen—no, eighteen—summers since that time, and yet the scent of damp pine needles and lake water still floats into my mind when the season turns warm.

I was only seven then, maybe just barely eight, but what a summer it was.

It began in Luzern, nestled like a watercolor painting between the Alps and the glittering expanse of Lake Lucerne. The city was a dreamscape of steep cobbled lanes and medieval charm, its pastel buildings looking like they’d been dipped in light. We stayed with my mother’s cousin in a gabled house perched on the slope above the lake, where early mornings belonged to silence broken only by the toll of distant church bells and the rustle of wind in the trees.

The house itself smelled of lemon oil and old wood. Every step on the staircase gave a gentle creak, like it was exhaling stories from another time. The windows opened onto rolling hills, and from the second-floor balcony, I could see the distant blur of sailboats gliding across the water like brushstrokes in motion.

That was where I first saw Leo.

His family lived down the hill, in a house shaded by a towering linden tree and crowned with geraniums spilling from flower boxes. His backyard was a tangle of raspberry canes, wild grass, and a rusty red swing set. He was eight, a whole year older than me, and had the confidence of someone who had already mapped every secret of the mountains behind his house. He wore hand-me-down shorts, scuffed sneakers, and a permanent sunburn on his nose. We bonded instantly, like flint and spark.

Our days blurred into an endless adventure—sunlight, motion, laughter. We wandered through Luzern like explorers in a kingdom. The Kapellbrücke, with its mossy wooden slats and ancient triangular paintings, became a drawbridge to an imaginary castle. Beneath it, the Reuss River flowed glassy and green, its surface split by the gentle ripple of swans.

Leo taught me to skip stones just past the old city wall. The lakeside was wild and blooming—clusters of Queen Anne’s lace nodded in the breeze, and the air buzzed with bees and the drone of passing boats. The stones were always cool to the touch, worn smooth by centuries of water. I would pick out the flattest ones, toss them eagerly, and watch them plop. Leo’s, by contrast, would dance across the water’s skin, five or six perfect skips before vanishing.

We imagined stories: sunken cities beneath the lake, swans who were enchanted princes, secret tunnels under the Lion Monument where a dragon slept. In that place, in that time, everything felt possible.

Then came the day we took the train to Thalwil.

The ride itself was magic. The SBB train glided along tracks that hugged Lake Zürich’s western shore, the water sparkling through breaks in tall pine and beech trees. From our seats, we could see tiny sailboats—white triangles drifting lazily—and grand villas tucked behind curtain-like weeping willows. The windows were slightly fogged with the morning chill, and Leo and I drew constellations into the condensation, pretending the stars had followed us.

Thalwil was quieter than Luzern, sleepier, but just as radiant in its own way. The path to the lake was paved in soft gravel that crunched beneath our sneakers. It wound past old chalets with wide eaves and carved wooden shutters, their porches blanketed with ivy and potted hydrangeas the size of footballs. The scent of fresh bread drifted from a bakery at the corner, mixing with the sharper tang of lakewater and sun-warmed asphalt.

My father brought us to a café just beside the dock, one he claimed had the best plum tart in all of Switzerland. The building was a modest, pale stucco structure with sun-bleached umbrellas shading a handful of iron tables. I remember the hum of cicadas in the trees overhead, the clink of cutlery, the gentle hiss of espresso machines inside. We sat under a lime tree, whose broad leaves cast trembling shadows over the white tablecloth.

While my parents reminisced and sipped Rivella, Leo and I made our escape to the dock.

It was a wide, weathered wooden platform, nailed together with care, extending like a lazy finger into the lake. The water beneath it was so clear we could see trout swimming in slow, hypnotic circles, their shadows like smudges on a watercolor canvas. We dangled our legs over the edge and said nothing for a while. The heat of the planks seeped into our thighs. Time felt stretched, slow and honey-thick.

That was the first time Leo skipped a stone six times. I counted each hop out loud, my voice rising with each splash. He didn’t say much, just smiled—proud but quiet.

Later, as the sun began to slide toward the horizon, we wandered back past the chestnut trees. I still remember the way their canopies filtered the golden light into shafts that felt like something out of a cathedral. I picked up shiny chestnuts and polished them on my shirt, convinced they might be lucky.

On the train ride back, dusk painted the lake in gradients of blue and violet, and Leo fell asleep briefly, his forehead pressed to the window. The reflection of his face drifted in and out as we passed through tunnels and caught glimpses of moonlight on water.

Back in Luzern, the rest of the summer felt like a slow goodbye.

We explored the Museggmauer, that ancient city wall with its stone towers rising like sentinels. From the top, you could see the whole town—red-tiled roofs, winding streets, and the lake, always the lake, ever shifting, ever shining.

One morning, Leo’s father took us sailing. The boat was small, with a single white sail and a rudder that groaned like a grandfather. We packed cheese sandwiches and apples, and for hours we drifted, the water slapping gently against the hull. The lake was blinding in the sunlight, a mirror so clear that clouds seemed to swim beneath us. I lay on my back, watching the sail flap lazily against the wind, and thought: This is what flying must feel like.

Our final day was soft with haze. The air was warm and still. Leo brought me behind my cousin’s house, up the grassy hill where wild thyme and dandelions grew in clusters. He carried with him a tiny telescope with a cracked lens and held it to the sky.

“There’s Venus,” he said, pointing.

“You can’t see Venus during the day,” I told him, giggling.

“You can,” he said, “if you believe hard enough.”

I rolled my eyes, but deep down, I wanted to believe too.

When it was time to leave, Leo didn’t say goodbye in words. Instead, he placed a stone in my hand—flat, cool, gray with a single cerulean streak like a frozen lightning bolt.

“Don’t forget,” he said.

“I won’t,” I promised.

Eighteen years have passed.

I came back this summer, for no clear reason other than a tug I couldn’t ignore. Luzern is mostly the same, though now I notice more—the way ivy overtakes old stone walls, how quiet the lakefront is in the morning, the rustling sound of bicycles on the cobblestones.

I took the train to Thalwil again. The same route. The same stillness on the lake. The café is still there, and when I ordered the plum tart, the woman at the counter said, “You look like someone who remembers things.”

And I do.

I walked back down to the dock—the same one, still weathered, though the wood has darkened with time and water. I sat on the edge, legs dangling over the side, and pulled the stone from my bag. The blue streak is a little faded now, but it’s still there.

I placed it carefully beside me and whispered, “I didn’t forget.”

The water was silent for a moment, and then a soft breeze passed through the reeds.

Maybe Leo is out there somewhere, in another city, another life, with his own family and memories. Maybe he’s forgotten me. Or maybe, one day, he’ll return, step onto this dock, and find that stone waiting.

And maybe—just maybe—that will be enough.

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I stayed on the dock for a long while.

The breeze coming off the lake carried with it the scent of wet stone and the soft metallic tang of deep water. Around me, the evening began to settle in layers—first a cooler light, then longer shadows, and finally the faint ringing of distant church bells. I closed my eyes and let the memory of that summer drift around me like mist.

I thought about how memory doesn’t preserve everything, only fragments. Not full conversations, but the sound of someone’s laugh. Not a whole day, but the shape of the light falling through a window. In my mind, Leo’s voice was a little distorted now—thinner, perhaps higher-pitched than it was in reality. I couldn’t recall the exact color of his eyes anymore, but I could still see the way he squinted when he smiled. I remembered the arch of his eyebrows when he was about to suggest something daring, like jumping into the lake fully clothed, or pretending to be street performers outside the concert hall with a cardboard violin and a paper cup.

Back in Luzern, I spent another night in a quiet guesthouse overlooking the Vierwaldstättersee—Lake Lucerne. The room was small and tidy, with linen curtains that swayed in the evening breeze and a vase of edelweiss perched on the windowsill. I couldn’t sleep, so I walked.

The old town was hushed and golden. The cobblestones glowed beneath the gas lamps, and the river mirrored the moon like a silver ribbon through the city. I passed the Spreuerbrücke, the lesser-known sibling of the Kapellbrücke, its medieval paintings still looming above the wooden planks, telling stories of death and time.

I crossed into the old quarter where flower boxes spilled over every window, spilling pinks and reds like a painter gone wild. I wandered past the Jesuit Church, its onion domes black against the sky, and through the quiet alleys where candlelit windows gave off glimpses of families at dinner—laughter, clinking glasses, soft music on old radios.

I thought again of Leo. And I realized, maybe what I remembered most wasn’t him exactly—it was the way I felt around him. Safe. Seen. Brave, somehow. Like the world was a place that welcomed wonder.

On my last morning, I made one more stop before leaving Luzern: the meadow behind my cousin’s old house. It took some climbing, and the path had grown more wild since those days, but I found it. The view was just as I remembered—rooftops like toy houses, the lake a sheet of light, and in the far distance, the snow-capped peaks of the Pilatus massif, wrapped in their usual aloofness.

There, I sat in the grass for a long time. The bees still hummed. The same small yellow butterflies flitted from flower to flower. And for a moment, I imagined a boy with tousled hair beside me, pointing a telescope at the morning sky.

“Venus,” I whispered to no one. “You can see it… if you believe hard enough.”

On the train back to Zürich, I watched the scenery blur past in watercolor motion—emerald hills, lake-slicked towns, cows grazing in orderly pastures. The rhythmic clatter of the train felt like a heartbeat under everything.

I realized something then.

Maybe the summer I remember wasn’t meant to last. Maybe it was perfect precisely because it didn’t. That’s what childhood does—it gives us moments so luminous, so untouched by cynicism, that they stay suspended in the soul, like stained glass catching the morning light.

I reached into my bag and took out the stone one last time. Turned it over in my palm. That blue streak, still there—like the line between water and sky. Like the seam in memory where time folds gently in on itself.

When the train paused briefly at Thalwil station, I stepped out onto the platform. Not to stay—just long enough to walk to the edge of the dock again.

The water was quieter this time, the surface rippling like brushed silk. I bent down and placed the stone beneath a wooden slat, hidden but not buried, tucked in like a gift. For someone. Anyone. Or maybe no one at all.

And then I left.

I’m writing this now from home, back in my adult life, surrounded by calendars and keyboards and the buzz of the everyday. But every so often, when the evening is quiet and the light is just right, I feel it again—that summer from long ago, when the world was new, and lakes could speak, and a boy named Leo gave me a stone as a promise.

And I remember.