The Fellowship of the Cow Bell

This post will include what so many of my fellow classmates have already so beautifully articulated: the death march up Deborence on Thursday. The reason we went to this lovely mountain is because it is the mountain that fell in one of the novels we read called ''When the Mountain Fell''. Clever title, I know.

It began as so many hikes do: uphill. We were all full of anticipation and suspense at the idea of triumphantly reaching the top. But little did we know that the journey would be fraught with fog, rain, snow, hail, cows and goats. Nevertheless, we lifted our rubber soled shoes and took those first few steps of our journey. We were The Fellowship of the Cow Bell.

The hike up the mountain took, roughly, 4 hours. At first the weather seemed sublime, a little sun, slight breeze, all we needed was a light jacket. We climbed rocks like spider monkeys (except for Kyle who was more like a winded gorilla). There were waterfalls and streams which had the best tasting water. It was like drinking liquid heaven or something. That's right, I did drink water from a stream in the Swiss Alps :) And the meadows! It was straight out of The Sound of Music! I even did the Maria and twirled around singing ''The hills are alive with the sound of music!!!'' and Caroline yodeled. It was pretty fantastic. But alas! The perfection was not to last. The fog that literally chased us up the mountain should've been a dead give away. It was constantly threatening to consume us. But like I said, the first two hours were pretty sublime. We were spider monkeys. Rock spider monkeys.

About 3/4 of the way up we stopped at this small village (as in 4-5 houses small). One of the men there has a cafe stop so we all got hot chocolate and warmed our feet which were soaking wet and numb. There were a ton of goats and cows in this village. All with bells around there necks (I'm currently trying to find out how terribly illegal it would be to steal one ;) ) From here it took two more hours to reach the pass, and the trip was both amazing and terrible. The fog intensified to the point where you couldn't see 20 ft in front of you. We played Marco Polo to keep track of each other.

I took hundreds of photos. The valleys are covered in a carpet of wildflowers; daisies, lilacs, lavendar...it was essentially my wedding bouquet still in the ground. The grass here is softer than at home (Louisville, Ky). It's everything I've ever dreamed of. Secluded, serene, wild, inspiring...it's just perfect. When I say the mountains are secluded I mean secluded. No sign of people for miles and entirely too easy to get lost. Especially, in the fog. There were times when we couldn't even see each other. It's frightening, and yet there's a beauty in the isolation. In feeling so small. The Alps make you appreciate how large the world is. We're all small dots on a map covered with so many other dots besides ours. Some dots bigger than us. Like the Alps.

In class we are constantly discussing the deception that is Switzerland, or nature in general. It appears to be the most beautiful, serene, calm, quaint place in the world but the mountains are dangerous. As we said so many times on that hike of death: ''Mountains, you win again!!!'

The whole hike truly reminded me of The Lord of the Rings. We truly were a fellowship on a journey. The theme song kept playing in my head from the first movie (To pass time we quoted a lot of movies and songs, including many lines from The Lord of the Rings). Needless to say though, we were ready to go by the end of those 4 hours. We got to the top, saw where the mountain fell and were all ready to go.

This is where is began hailing. Miserable could describe the physical part of returning to civilization. All our shirts were soaked, many also wearing shorts and no jackets. Ours fingers numb and toes soaking we trekked back down. The sun eventually did come back and apart from the episodes of being delirious we we're unharmed (except for Caitlin. But we gave her the Purple Heart so it's all good). And now we can officially say we've experienced virtually every season in 7 hours.

Upon exiting the treeline of the mountain we ran into a herd of cattle, their cow bells tinkling a single melody through the air. Yet, even though we made it through the wilderness, and literally through hail and back, nature proved once again that she always wins. It's the ideal vs. reality. In When the Mountain Fell there's a constant sense of fear and respect for the mountain. Even though man does triumph at the end of the novel (Antoine lives after being buried), in real life it is so often the opposite. We can attempt to control, to predict, nature but we can never truly run from her. We are really such a small part of this world we live in. I think that hike really made that evident.

I'm going to end this ridiculously long post with a quote from Wilhelm Tell (another piece we're studying:

''Undaunted he ventures,

No blossom he sees

On bleak fields of ice,

No green friendly trees;

And down far below him the endless cloud

Will cover his home in a grey ghostly shroud.

Till suddenly parting

A glimpse it will yield

Deep, deep as in water

Faint green of a field.

Au revoir!

B