What I Did On My Summer Vacation
A luxury hotel group, the largest and oldest in Switzerland, last year decided to re-instate a writer-in-residence program. They had it for some sixty years, then stopped just before the onset of World War Two.
I was told about it because of my having lived in Switzerland for five years. To my astonishment, I was one of the first half-dozen writers invited to participate. Former visitors include Thomas Mann, Goethe, Hemingway, and Mark Twain! It makes me laugh just to name them, but it's true. We were given five nights in the lovely Hotel Zermatterhof, at the foot of the Matterhorn. It was a spectacular and totally unexpected treat.
At the conclusion of this glorious stay, they asked me to write an article based upon my experiences. I thought you might enjoy seeing what I've had to say:
The Swiss themselves will tell you they're a hard people to know. Many take pride in this fact. It is not difficult to understand why, especially as this trait is shared with other cultures that face a similar problem.
My wife and I were greeted by the same closed-door attitude when we moved to Oxford. On the surface, the two locations could hardly be more different. The Oxford landscape is as flat as a crepe. Beyond the university's confines, the city could hardly be described as orderly. The region produces no wine, and its chocolates are second-rate. The only two issues Oxford holds in common with Switzerland are a ridiculous fixation on local cheese, and this, the trait which grants the Swiss absolution for their attitude: They are both cultures under siege.
More than one-third of all Swiss residents are foreigners. The same is true for Oxford. In both cases, this percentage does not include the hordes of students, tourists, and visiting dignitaries that invade year round. What is more, most of these residents are transients, meaning that they are in the region for a limited time. It was recently estimated that, on average, the entire transient population of Oxford is renewed again every four years. Which explains why newcomers to both regions find themselves repeatedly asked one question every time they meet a local: When are you leaving?
I lived in Switzerland for four years, first as a lecturer in economics at the American College in Canton Vaud, then as Marketing Manager of an international corporation based in Lugano. I learned to speak Italian and German and a smattering of French. I had Swiss friends. But I left Switzerland as I arrived—an outsider.
Following this, I became a consultant based in Dusseldorf. It was during this period that I began writing. I wrote for nine years and completed seven books before my first was published. During this struggle, I had several frustratingly close calls. The last of these was the offer of my first publishing contract, to write a hands-on travelogue of Switzerland.
To make a long story achingly short, the book was written and accepted, at which point the publisher went bankrupt. As I prepared for this trip to Zermatt, my wife came across the manuscript, which I had not seen in years. My last trip to Zermatt was during the formation of that never-published book.
In beginning that ill-fated travelogue, I was faced with a horrible quandary: The problem was not writing about Switzerland. The problem was finding something original, a theme that had not been done a thousand times before, and by far better writers. I carried this dilemma around with me for several months. The answer finally came from the most unexpected of sources.
Throughout this nine-year period of creative trial and struggle, I continued to work as a consultant. My day-job had me traveling to two and sometimes three countries every week. I learned to write in taxis, hotels, planes, waiting rooms, conference halls, and occasionally at my own desk. My goal was to write twenty hours per week. I held to this with the grim conviction that if I let up, even briefly, outside pressures would tempt me to let go of my dream entirely. And it was only now, at this point of having received my first contract, that I found myself unable to write.
One of my consulting projects at the time was with Alusuisse, which was looking to set up a new smelting operation. My contact at the company was a fiercely intelligent Swiss, whose only speed was full bore. After a typically exhaustive nine-hour session, we had paused for the day's only meal. I found myself confessing my current dilemma, having finally received a publishing offer, and having no idea whatsoever to write about.
This steel-hard executive instantly underwent a remarkable transformation, and ordered me to write about hiking the high-altitude glaciers. He almost sang his descriptions of the experience. This discussion continued through the remainder of our meal and carried us back to his office, where he insisted upon calling his closest hiking buddy, one of the directors of Swiss National Tourism.
As I observed him on the phone, I felt as though I had glimpsed something new, not merely in this rather crusty businessman, but in the culture he represented. It was only much later, as I completed the work on this manuscript, that I could name what I first witnessed there in his office.
These two gentlemen, the Alusuisse executive and the tourism director, took me under their collective wing. They mapped out a summer program, where by the end of September I would have traversed at least one major glacier in each of the Swiss alpine regions. Beginning the third week in June, I traveled back to Switzerland each Friday, and spent the weekends literally hiking myself into a sweaty little puddle.
My first glacier, at the order of the tourism boss, was located at the end of the Engadine Valley beyond St Moritz. In Victorian times, this route was known as Smuggler's Pass, for the illicit traffic of goods carried back and forth between Switzerland and Italy.
It was a brutal trip, both because of the terrain and the circumstances. The trek began with a four hour hike just to arrive at the glacier face, then over an hour to scale the moraine rubble, another three hours to cross the glacier itself, and a final hour to reach the mountain hut where we were to overnight.
What was worse, I was part of the first team to arrive at the hut since the host family's daughter had perished by falling into an ice crevasse. The entire Engadine mountain community was in mourning. The somber closeness they felt to the absent parents was wrenching, especially as I watched them lay a wreath on the ice.
My second weekend was to be spent in Zermatt, home to the only glacier stable enough that I could cross alone, without being roped up or in the company of a guide. The tourism boss and my new friend at Alusuisse insisted it was time, as they put it, for me to meet the ice on the ice's terms. Alone. When the power was total, and the ice was my entire world. I still remember that moment, sitting in his fine office and hearing him say those words, and watching the stern Swiss veneer melt away. The rock and the ice and the power and the solitude.
The night of my arrival in Zermatt, I suffered a series of horrible nightmares. The emotions surrounding my experience in the Engadine came surging back. I dreaded going up and meeting the ice alone. In the Engadine I had been roped to my guide, part of a group. Each step had been preceded by carefully testing the ice ahead. Tomorrow I would have none of that safety. Every time I shut my eyes I saw the waiting crevasse, the fall, the wreath. I bitterly regretted agreeing to this insanity. I wished I had never started the project.
I took the Gorner Bahn to the top station, and arrived at the trail soon after the sun crested the surrounding peaks. Walking to the Monte Rosa hut was possible alone and unroped because the glacier was extremely stable. Most glaciers are constantly on the move, which creates deep fissures and highly unstable surface ice. The base of a glacier generally moves faster than the face. As a result, what appears to be a stable sheet of ice is often rotted from beneath. The chasms below can be a quarter of a mile deep. But the Monte Rosa walk was over a very stable ice flow. Or so I was told.
As I stepped onto the ice, I heard the drumming of an approaching helicopter. The chopper descended onto a narrow tongue of earth that jutted like a peninsula into the ice. Soon as the motor died, a family started piling out. Mom, Dad, more kids than I could count, another older couple, and piles and piles of gear.
Only this was not mountaineering equipment. Instead, I watched them pull out frosted wine buckets, a case of champagne, picnic hampers, bottles of lemonade for the kids, a basket that wafted the scent of fresh-baked bread, a bag from the Caviar House, a wooden bucket of butter, and an entire wheel of cheese. Then out came a very old lady on a padded stretcher. The men took hold of the four handles and carted her out onto the ice. As the chopper took off again, I went back and offered to help, mostly because I had to learn what in the world was happening here.
The family walked far enough out to be surrounded by white, and basically pitched camp. They explained that their grandmother was dying with cancer, and her last wish had been to smell the ice once more.
The old lady was there and not there. She smiled whenever someone spoke to her, and had a gentle hand for every child that came within reach. But her attention was really on the ice. I left them to their happy-sad outing, gifted with an answer to a question I had not even dared ask: Why bother? Why even go out there, when there is such huge danger? Why risk a daughter, a family, even an hour of your time?
As I walked further and further into the white-bound world, surrounded by wind and peaks and a blue-black sky, I found myself becoming imbedded in the silence. It was an awesome moment, being enveloped by a force that could kill so easily, and yet held such magnificent beauty. By the time I returned late that afternoon, the chopper had returned and the family was gone. But I thanked the old lady just the same, and wished her well in her onward journey.
Here then is my tiny glimpse into what I feel may be the heart of the Swiss. They go through life overshadowed by nature. It surrounds and isolates them on all sides. Those Swiss who are genuinely happy in their own skin have found a way to meet this power head on. Face to face. The only way such a meeting can happen. Alone.
Those who do this, they return to the hurried rush of modern life with a visceral bond to their true world, a land that was here long before they arrived, and will remain long after they are gone. They have experienced a partial, momentary, imperfect unity. And this small fragment is enough.
