It was comforting, when we were in Switzerland two weeks ago, to find that they hadn’t changed it much. The Alps, for example: still there. St. Gallen, the city housing Bill’s university and the reason for our being there in the first place: unchanged, so far as I could tell. And our little town, Speicher, that I came to know in my sweet, long, unoccupied and mostly solitary days there, was almost exactly the same.
Except for all the snow.
We lived in Switzerland from October to the end of December in 1995. It was still fairly warm when we got there, and the cows that lived on the dairy farms all around the edges of town spent days and nights outdoors. Through our open windows at night came the soft clang of the bells that dangled from their necks, and also the quiet gurgle of an underground spring that emerged into a stone tub just above the yard, and again into a pond at the bottom of our garden.
This time, all of this was covered in snow. The whole of Switzerland, in fact, as Thomas reported when he came home for lunch that Tuesday, was covered in 280 million tons of snow, and it continued to fall, on and off, during our entire stay.
When we lived there, Susanne’s garden was still in riotous bloom. She invited me to help myself to lettuces and herbs. She arranged, for my arrival, a glorious and huge bouquet; it was waiting in our apartment when I got home from the airport. The girls, who were then four and nearly three, spent hours in the garden making soups out of flowers and long pieces of grass.
This time the only grass to be seen was what Susanne bought in the grocery store: cat grass, in a little white planter, to settle the cat’s sickly stomach.
When we lived there, I probably went for a walk at least twice a day. Every morning I walked down some way below our house and then up a road that rose at a sharp angle above the town. Late in the day I often went for another walk just to see the sun’s light on the white flanks of Santis, a distant-enough mountain that marked, for me, the edges of the real Alps. I might also go for walk earlier, sketchpad in tow. Once I spent a long time trying to recreate on pa
per the bell-tower of the town’s lovely church; another time I came up with a pretty good rendering of some cows, a scene to be had in abundance. These cows happened to be grazing near the post office. And some days I might go for a walk with Susanne and the girls, along one of the many “wander wegs” that took us through forests of vaulted pines and then suddenly out to breath-taking views of field and farmhouse.
But on a clear day, we had a breath-taking view from our bedroom window. The ground fell away from the house and formed a valley called Speicher-schwendi; far below and beyond that to the east were the snow-covered mountains of Austria. They were very far away, and on some days we couldn’t see them at all. But on the days we could see them, well, sometimes I just stood there and looked.
From our kitchen window, across that same valley but at a different angle, I loved to look at another little village. Like ours, its buildings were cut into terraces on a steep slope and, from somewhere at its center, a church spire rose and made itself picturesque. In the evenings, as it grew dark and I made dinner, I watched the lights of that town gradually come on until the sun was gone. Then the landscape disappeared and the town was only little lights against a black and imagined hillside.
Switzerland is beautiful in any weather. I didn’t regret the snow and the way it altered the landscape during this visit. I invested in long underwear and wore it all the time, and we walked and walked, the way I loved to do. On Monday, the first day of our visit, Susanne took us for a walk I knew well, though I couldn’t remember how to begin it. The walking paths, never paved but well worn, were reduced to thinly trodden trenches between two feet of snow on either side. Susanne and I fell on our backs and made snow angels; what else are you going to do?
On Tuesday we rode the train halfway to St. Gallen and then walked the rest of the way down. The snow came in fits and starts: sometimes the sky was clear of it and the sun came out; moments later we were sure it was a blizzard. We stopped and watched some children sledding; there must be no better place for sledding than Switzerland. When we got to the city, we stopped almost immediately at a chocolate shop and had hot chocolate. As we sat there, the sky cleared and then snowed again; we watched dump trucks rumble past, filled to over-brimming with snow.
Wednesday morning came too soon. We got up extra early to eat breakfast with Thomas, who had delayed his meeting so that we could visit longer. Eventually Julia left for school and Thomas for work; Susanne and Livia waited to walk us to the train station. I closed my suitcase, newly padded with chocolate to take home, and took one last look out the bedroom window.
It was a different window this time, two stories above the bedroom Bill and I shared when we lived in that same house more than ten years ago. But its angle was the same, looking out over the same garden where the valley began. I looked out at the familiar roofs and hillsides that sat exactly where I left them, disguised for the time being with snow. It had been a clear morning and I was hoping, once more, for a view. But the snow had started again, and Austria had disappeared.
