Silence of the Mountains

Due to minor injuries and shoddy internet access I have just now recovered enough to tell you about the Solalex Death March. (In other words...I have been procrastinating.) Last week we went for an eight hour hike (there and back). The hike was straight uphill the whole way to the top, which is why I refer to it as a death march. We took this hike in light of reading Ramuz's "When the Mountain Fell." It was interesting to see where the story took place and do all of the walking that the people had to do as they lived a long time before the invention of cars and trains. Feeling like you're walking in someone else's shoes has a way of putting things in perspective. While we were hiking I kept thinking about what it must have been like for the people who had to climb up and down the mountain day after day. I thought it was horrible just climbing it once; I can't imagine what it would be like to make that journey all the time. Though I am beginning to get a feel for it having to trek up and down from Chalet Martin almost everyday. It was amazing getting to see Anzeindaz and Derborence, where Ramuz's story was set. Getting to see the location made me appreciate the story that much more because it helped me see everything in a whole new light. I now know what it was like for Justin and Dsozet (characters in the story) running back and forth, up and down the mountain. Not an easy journey, let me tell you.

My favorite passage from "When the Mountain Fell" is the one about silence in the first chapter. "around the two men there slowly grew a strange thing, inhuman, and in the end unbearable--Silence." There is a lot more to this passage but this line sums it up well. Hiking through the mountains, silence is very evident. If not for the group of us there would have been complete silence except for the occassional rush of the river. Being in a large group we gave life to the mountains again though only temporarily. As Ramuz also said, "Life begins again because of the living sounds." This statement holds such truth. Living sounds really do make the world go round. Without living things everything else seems to be lifeless and gloomy. It is the noise of people and animals and rushing water et cetera that give apparently lifeless objects life again. When the mountain fell in Derborance and killed all those people it took away the sounds, but when a survivor came forth life began again because of his sound. Though there was temporary loss and silence because of it, the living sounds brought everyone back to life again after the mountain fell. In the same way we brought a little bit of life to the mountain the day we took our death march. There were temporary moments of silence during the hike, but life resumed again as the sound of our voices rang through the mountainside.