I’m not an outdoorsy person. The largest swaths of my life have been spent in practice rooms, classrooms, and libraries. But that may be about to change.
Last night, a Smithsonian Journey’s tour of the Swiss Alps drew to a close. The irony of finding myself appointed study leader on this particular tour had to do with its nature: somewhere on the brochure (that I ordinarily do not see) appeared a cautionary statement indicating that the physical level of the itinerary would be “active.”
In tour language, “active” means certain days will involve moderately demanding hiking or extensive walking. Sounds fine, right? Except I happen to be still on the rebound from two foot surgeries. The way back to mobility has been tougher than I expected. When my summer work with Smithsonian started back in June, I was more or less hobbling through my duties. As my primary role involves delivering lectures, hosting dinners, holding discussion groups, and being available for questions, things were working. Plus my first three tours were based on river ships.
But then came Switzerland. I had served on Swiss tours before, so I didn’t give it any thought when agreeing to this particularly tour. But I also didn’t really think through the itinerary. I simply agreed to “take the Switzerland tour.”
When Monica, the travel director and chief ground organizer, greeted me at the Zürich airport, she expressed her surprise that my name had appeared on her roster. We’d worked together in June on an Elbe-River Cruise so she knew my mobility was limited. “I figured you must have fully recovered because this tour is ranked as physically active.”
“Really?” I said. (“Oops,” I thought.) How had I missed this? My past tours in Switzerland involved activities like taking the railroad up to the Matterhorn, or going on the Glacier Express—all gorgeous things to do, but not strenuous.
Well, as you know, troublesome things can turn out to be a blessing. We came to the end of the tour and, while I was not able to do everything, I stretched each day to do most of it. Along the way I hiked through some of greatest beauty I’ve seen in my life.
I learned some things hiking this area of the Alps (known as the Bernese Oberland), including the following.
- What it must feel like to be a figure in a Caspar David Friedrich painting (more on that below).
- How to distinguish between water rushing down from glaciers and water coming out of the mountains (glacier water is steely grey; mountain water is clear).
- Why Mahler had to add certain percussion to his symphonies, because his scoring really does evoke the hypnotic music made by the belled cows roaming free in the Alpen meadows.
- That, after limping around for months, I not only could, but did cover quite a bit of distance on the Alpen mountain trails, including trails that stretched up steep inclines or dipped deeply down. I even made it over mazes of thick roots and across uneven boulders bridging the rushing brooks. I came in “last” on each hike. But I came in.
And finally I learned this:
- I need to get out more.
I need to get away more from the computer, more from the phone (I already knew that), and be involved outside more. My sense of nature is deep, built both by a childhood spent playing outdoors and by familiarity with long-cultivated strands of art, poetry, and music. But it’s now time to get out into the real thing. And since we’ve just moved from Texas to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I have a golden opportunity to do exactly that.
Don’t get me wrong! Back in Texas, I was plenty involved with nature, especially during the decade we spent out on a ranch, raising goats, cows, tending to guard dogs and barn cats, and shooting, or otherwise disposing of, rattlesnakes. I counted the days until the Indian Paintbrush and Blue Bonnets would carpet the spring pastures.I particularly loved the soft wash of brown, blue, and grey that colored the ranch in winter.And then, there was that magnificent sky, a massive heavenly theater for phenomena of weather as varied as sizzling heat waves and wildly thrashing tornadic storms. My heart will never leave Texas until I can reconcile myself to missing the sky’s daily drama.
But there are other dramas to experience. I certainly experienced them on this trip. And now I’m near all kinds of new places to explore—places I never got to see when growing up in the Virginia mountains or doing graduate degrees in North Carolina. And the time seems right to do so.
So, let me back-track to the subject of fog. One of our days on this tour, we took the train from Interlaken to a small town called Lauterbrunnen in what is widely acknowledged as one of the Bernese Alps’ most impressive valleys. Johann Gottfried von Goethe visited here in 1779 and wrote quite a famous poem called Spirit Song Over the Waters (Gesang der Geisters über den Wassern).
From Lauterbrunnen, one whisks up by gondola to a high stopping point where the hiking begins. The stretch of trail continues steeply up for the longest 15 minutes I can remember, but then becomes more manageable for the rest of the distance. Ultimately the trail ends up in a charming, remote village called Mürren. And from there, one takes a dramatic trip up to Schilthorn, the highest point of the Bernese Alps (9744 ft.), often called “the top of Europe,” to an observatory station somehow glued onto the jagged peak of the Jungfrau Mountain. It has been featured in films, including the 1969 James Bond classic On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Just the thought of being perched up there on that mountain-top is scary.
But the hiking was not scary, because, that morning, a dense fog enveloped the slopes for our trek. The majestic views of the Alps were blocked by fog. The deep valleys were covered by a thick carpet of clouds. Whatever drops there were below our trail (and they were extreme), we couldn’t see them. Thus, the whole way seemed intimate and peaceful.
The fog swirled in and out of the gorges. Thick clouds of white danced above the rushing brooks and wove around the steep peaks, giving us sometimes a glimpse, but then quickly closing them off as if to hide them in modesty.
The fog seemed to embrace and protect us. Late-summer flowers were still poking their heads from the luxurious grass, only barely overshadowed by the brown and maroon colors from extensive stretches of fall-touched ferns. Spongy green moss sprang up everywhere. Yet the crisp air was surprisingly dry and deeply fragrant.
All the while, I kept thinking about paintings by the early German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. His canvases proved again and again that a natural setting such as the Bernese Oberlands offers humanity its greatest dramas, every time we enter onto its stage.
And that’s what I now intend to do, starting with my first opportunity. Maybe some of you can suggest areas for me to explore. And maybe I will even buy serious hiking gear (starting with those Alpine sticks which would have helped this trip). But those are details. Simply put, I want more of what I experienced here. It’s time. And, remarkably, I believe my feet now will take me.