My stay didn't quite turn out the way I expected — upon my arrival in the valley I was informed that an avalanche had cut off the gravel road that leads to the little cabin I was planning to stay in and that it wouldn't be accessible for the next few weeks. Thankfully, a friend quickly offered me a room on their farmstead, next door to my mom and her husband, and in spite of being somewhat disappointed not to be able to spend my time the way I had hoped for (a little further away from the village – and, the family..!), I gratefully accepted. Yet I wonder what would have happened if the avalanche had come down only AFTER I had reached the cabin?? Would it still have taken weeks to clear the road?
Anyway, so I ended up staying at this mountain farm, living in a cosy little room facing the Tennen Mountain Range. What a wonderful view upon waking up!!! My window is facing west, so I can not really see the sun as it rises in the morning, but I can watch the peaks in front of my window turn from blue to pink, from salmon to yellow and finally white, as they reflect the sunlight — it's so lovely to watch: those changing colors, the light's play — every morning I wake in anticipation of this spectacle …
This wing of the farmhouse is next to the stables and sometimes when I wake right before dawn, all curled up underneath the warm sheets, I listen to the noise of the cattle being milked, the light sound of the horse sleigh bells as the sleighs are taken out of the coach house, the panting and stamping of the horses … and in spite of the awful cold it makes me feel all cosy and snug, I bury myself deep in my pillows and under my giant down duvet where the cold can't reach me and go back to sleep until the first daylight comes up and wakes me again — this time to the sound of the heating being turned on — and I stay in bed watching the mountains change colour … by the time they turn from salmon to yellow the room is usually warm enough to dare come out of my eiderdown shelter and finally face the day, take a shower, have breakfast and get dressed for the world outside … which means covering my body with down again, haha, turning into something that resembles a marshmallow at best, a fat little "Michelin Man" at worst … these past few days we have had degrees way below zero (in Celsius anyway), dropping as low as -17°C / 1°F at daytime.
(click pictures for bigger view)yeah, I look funny, I know! Just look at those mittens above, haha! A friend gave them to me, they may not be exactly elegant but I wouldn't have been able to take all these pictures without them in the freezing cold, they're the perfect photographer's winter equipment, a fingerless glove and a mitten all in one, real cool!
Looking like a marshmallow man I leave the house at about ten every morning, going for long walks, hikes or snowshoeing tours, either by myself or with family or friends. I always feel a little odd and clumsy, trying to move with all the many layers of cloth, heavy boots, hat, scarf and mittens on me …
Out there, what I find though — once I start moving and forget about the cold and the clumsiness — is a near perfect winter wonderland … a bleak but beautiful landscape, formed of patterns, shapes and texture, sun and shadow constantly painting pictures onto the snowy white canvas spread across the land, pictures that change from one minute to the next, everything is in motion and yet nothing moves.
The world is frozen still, motionless underneath the wandering light, the everchanging shadows giving the illusion of a liveliness that ceases as soon as the sun disappears for even the briefest of moments. A fierce cold is all that remains, a world void of colour other than shades of grey and blue … a hostile, threatening blue that bites my face as much as my soul, creeping up my back and under my skin, sending shivers up and down my spine … it's impossible to stand that cold blue — that blue cold — for any length of time, to keep on moving is the only way to escape — that, and praying for the sun to return soon. Until then, my batteries run on emergency power, moving like a robot, not thinking, not dreaming, not looking right or left … one foot in front of the other, looking down, head pulled in between the shoulders, making my way to some lodge, some fire place, some hot cocoa … to come alive again and finally find the strength and motivation to face the way back home, ha!
Do I sound unenthused? Haha! Truth is, as unpleasant as it sounds when I describe it like that — and as much as I curse that blue cold while being exposed to it, for sure — I still adore it! It's some kind of love-hate thing, I guess. I love the way the cold makes the following warmth seem so much more wonderful and valuable … I like the challenge of being out and about in that kind of weather, the way it makes me become aware of nature's strength and power and the beauty and wonder of being able to move therein.
It's a world of opposites — one moment everything seems dead and gone, like the world is hibernating, even the colors and sounds — but it only takes a single ray of sunshine sometimes, to make everything come alive again. It's fascinating and enchanting and at times I can completely lose myself in that, following the light's play with my eyes, listening to the stillness, simply being alive. I stop all the time, looking here and there, taking pictures of wayward findings, odd little details, snow that glistens and shines like rhinestone in the sun, snow crystals as big as pebbles, looking like feather and down, so soft and flaky, like it's not cold at all, haha! What a mistake — I'm reminded immediately upon touching it with my bare hands, ouch!
The weather is changing all the time, too. Up here in the mountains a bunch of clouds in the distance can turn into a nightmare above my head within minutes. A sky so blue that it hurts my eyes can turn grey and black while I have a quick cup of cocoa in a ski lodge. I have been told all sorts of scary stories, people getting lost in these mountains, caught by thunderstorms, dying in landslides and avalanches and whatnots … and I will admit I'm a bit of a coward, I have no intention of risking my neck or other important body parts, especially not when I'm out all alone, so I always ask the locals for weather forecasts and trail conditions before I start, making sure there are lodges within reach of the trails so I can rest and warm up and — most importantly for a gourmand like me — grab some decent food! I must stay strong, after all, and in the cold one burns sooooo many calories …
In fact, this year places to go have been pretty limited, due to the somewhat odd weather and snow conditions. Many trails are not accessible in this deep, way too fluffy snow — at least not by foot. Even with snowshoes or touring ski it's difficult and rather hazardous now, with the — unseasonably — high risk of avalanches. There are quite a few summits that have lifts or ropeways going up but usually that means just tons of people and completely crowded lodges, which I'm none too mad about, so most of my favourite peaks are subject to being adored from the distance only this winter, looking up from below instead of the other way round, the way I'd prefer. Well, if I see the mountains at all, that is! Right now there is no trace of them on the horizon, like some greedy giant has stolen them overnight.
The place where they should be is one huge, murky, grey plane, a misty swirling of clouds hanging so deep you no longer reckognize them as clouds. Yesterday's blizzard brought tons of ice and new snow and the sky has been completely cast over ever since, it feels like it hardly lights up during the day. It put an early end to my tours and hikes, limiting the possibilities to spend the day quite a bit, but it's still beautiful.
The trees … they look like they are covered in icing and sugar now, every little twig is coated in white — multitudes of teensy-weensy white ice-cubes, so funny to look at! Many of the young alder trees are bending and breaking under the heavy, frozen snow, exposing the fresh orange wood on their inside, the colorful splinters forming a strange contrast to the monochrome blue and white around them, looking almost obscene.
Ice, ice and more ice … everything is freezing over, even the creek has disappeared, though I can still hear it's babbling sound. Way down underneath it's heavy, gently rounded ice crust, it still flows, invisible to the beholder.
All the hundreds of little waterfalls coming out of the hillsides, they have turned into scary gatherings of icicles, looking like mighty spear heads, like the hastate portcullis' of ancient castles …
In spite of the weather, I went for a long, final walk today, partly following the cross country ski tracks (as far as I could see them in the mist), partly trudging through the deep snow … I so love the crunching noise of the snow, it always has a rather becalming effect on me, almost tranqulizing..! Today though, in the dense fog, everything sounded quite different, somewhat muted, subdued, like really "flat".
There was no trace of the sun, as well — it seems to have disappeared with the mountains for good. The cold became unbearable after a while, my face was frozen so stiff, I couldn't even move my lips to greet a fellow hiker, it was simply impossible to form a single word, ha! Hard to believe this was the same trail I walked only a couple of days ago, when reaching the summit and being exposed to the sun, it was so warm that I could pull off my jumper and sit there in a t-shirt, getting a tan (umm, okay — more like freckles in my case...). That day the sky was almost brash blue and instead of the vast nothingness, there was a mass of summits in front of me, it was silent as well, but in a different way, a distinct crystal clear silence … broken only by nature itself, the whistling noise of the wind, the soft, fissling sound of little snow clods sliding down the slopes … every now and then I could hear a bird in the distance, it's song echoing off the mountain face. I even saw a few roebucks while I sat there that day, moving about noiselessly — something I could not even imagine today, with zero visibility.
That day was special in more than one regard, seeing those deer was an exception, for sure. Fact is, most of the wild animals I saw during my time here were dead … elks and chamois, shot by Dutch hunters. A few days ago I went down to the valley to have dinner with my mom and her husband, when a couple of dead elks blocked my way ... the hunters were posing proudly and dozens of photographs were taken of the men and their prey. The snow in front of them was blood-soaked and the giant stag's antlers formed a spooky silhouette against the backdrop of the violet evening sky … so majestic those animals looked … such a sad sight ... their dead eyes wide open, their necks bent in the most bizarre of angles, their bodies still warm enough to steam in the cold … what a shame.
Considering that the above "event" was nothing too special for anybody involved, I no longer wonder why it is that by day I find all these animal traces but hardly ever come across any of their causers … quite different from what I experienced in the Rocky Mountains, wildlife hides all day in these parts of the world, coming out of the woods at night only, knowing all too well that their heads carry the hunter's favourite trophies …
Ah, it's getting late, I guess I must come to a close now, facing my last night in this wonderful winterworld. Here I sit and type, looking out of the window as night falls, missing my friend, the moon … like the sun, it is hiding behind those ruthless clouds. Not that it was ever really there at night, ha! … but by day, turning my face to the sun, what did I find up there in the middle of the blue sky? Yep, the crescent moon! Visible all day, disappearing with the twilight. For a few minutes every day I could see it in the dark, right beside Venus, the brightly shining evening star, before it finally went down behind the mountains. Without the moon to brighten up the sky, the starry night was overwhelming ... glistening and sparkling like a carpet of jewels, some celestial snowfield, reflecting these earthly ones.
During one of my first nights here, I got up in the middle of the night, felt my way to the window and opened the curtains, expecting to find the snowy, greyish night sky that I had said goodnight to a few hours ago … instead I suddenly found myself gazing at millions and millions of stars! The brightest, biggest stars I could imagine, bigger and more impressive than any starry sky I've ever seen, even bigger than the stars in the desert. I was completely mesmerized by all the twinkling — I opened my window, staring up into the sky, ignorant of the cold, almost hypnotized … it was like the sky was pulling me in, sucking me up, spitting me right into space, to be a star among stars, twinkling down from above, eternally … but alas, the chilly wind transported me back to reality in no time, forcing me to quickly skedaddle back underneath those warm eiderdown quilts …
So, goodbye it is — goodbye mountains, goodbye snow … goodbye my cheeky little kittens, goodbye wonderful view ... boohoohoo — I'm sooooo drippy and sappy and sentimental, haha!
Okay, I guess I should sleep for a few hours now, before it's time for the long drive back home ...
ps: more pics to follow soon!
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