Children have herded cattle for centuries, including here in the Black Forest. As shepherd boys, mostly boys came to the Black Forest farms, because their own families with many children were happy for every eater less. They were 7 to 14 years old. They worked and studied 12 to 15 hours a day, away from their families. In wind and weather, they were on the move, usually barefoot. Childhoods marked by deprivation and hard work, the likes of which we can no longer imagine today. The rural life on the "high forest" before 1960 was modest and hard and not yet a place "where others went on vacation". Especially touching is the life of the children who worked their humps round. Only with the arrival of the electric fence and a changed awareness in Germany of the importance of childhood did this form of child labor stop here around 1965. The Hochschwarzwälder Hirtenpfad follows the paths of the shepherd boys along the high pastures. The stories of former shepherd boys leave their mark along the way. Other traces in the terrain come from stronger forces: first glaciers pushed rocks and formed valleys and lakes, then people worked the soil: they cleared, plowed, planted, harvested, they cultivated it and set boundaries.