The woods were starting to green when we went on our camping trip that first warm day of March. Our six had a favoured spot in the forest: a clearing where the trees were held back. At night it had a spooky feel, but in the days it was our small kingdom: not far from Goethe’s Oak, a tree with a crown so big that in the summers it could shade the whole student body of the Bauhaus.

We went to the woods after class. Though it may be a cliché, the sensation, of wheeling our bikes through the city streets and then up to the woods, was of flight. Vistas opened out between the rows of beech just as I’d seen in photographs of Manhattan: roads narrowing from the foreground between skyscrapers. And for a while I could pretend I was a New York taxicab, wheeling my way through the grid, and that the woodland was a cityscape filled with smells of the subway: ventilated air, and frying onion.

It wouldn’t be much of a detour, I thought, to turn my bike westward and enquire about the possibility of a shift or two.

On the cycle I caught Walter grinning at me, and Charlotte too. Jenö was already ahead. I loved my friends in that moment, their faces caught in the flickering wood, stained by the shadows, hair lit by sunshine. There were stories of pilgrims going into the woods for spring rites that ended in romping bacchanalia, emotions far outrunning reason. There were six of us in our saintish tribe. A man might hope, of course.

In the beech forest the density of the wood was like a bonfire. All the trees were so tall; cherry, green, and rust, their bark so sensitive you could carve your name with just a coin. In the autumn the forest would be aflame with colour, and in the evenings, with a good sunset, the beech could turn violet or blue or pink. In the winter the wind made the branches moan; but in the summer, with the leaves, there was an electrical sound, as if the woods had charge.

It was a gift. These woods, that place, back then.

When the road split I told them I’d catch them up. Charlotte narrowed her eyes but said nothing.

Steiner’s studio was at the edge of the beech forest: not quite town, not quite forest. As I wheeled my bicycle on the gravel path I was surprised to find Mr Steiner on the front porch of the large cabin, cleaning something with an old rag. Again, he wore the foreman’s coat. He took a moment to recognise me, but when he did, his look was one of pleasure. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘it’s you!’