Mountains

Innsbruck absolutely exceeded my expectations. I’m not sure what I was expecting, an attractive small town in which I could drink beer, I suppose, but I’d entirely forgotten the magic of mountains. The way they sit there so vast and craggy and silent, just pulling sound into them, until you’re in this immense silent space of stone and trees and time so endless your whole life is just the merest blink, or nothing.

And the smell! I’d forgotten the smell of mountain forests in the summer, of pine and fir baking in heat, of wild flowers opening and mist from tiny mossy streams, and the smell of sunlight itself. I think my host probably thought there was something wrong with me because I basically spent the first hour telling her how good everything smelled.

Ignoring various bizarre signs along the way...

She lived up on the flanks of the mountains, so as soon as I roused myself in the morning I put some tea in a jar and headed up the roads behind her house to go smell the air some more. The roads quickly petered into trails which I climbed, and after coughing up (disgusting I know) a pint of phlegm and what I swear was another lung full of Moscow air pollution, feeling a bit like a city rat creeping up out of a sewer into the forest, the going was much easier and smoother.  I happily went higher and higher just ecstatic to be in nature. The trail ended at an incomprehensible dam-like structure that didn’t seem to be damming anything. (I found out later that it’s an avalanche guard.) I felt like I was alone at the top of the world, with eagle views of Innsbruck and the Alps and even Italy spread below me, though of course the peaks themselves were still hugely far. Pushing on just a little higher, above the avalanche guard I found, of all things, a veritable mountain-biking highway and a plethora of trails from which to choose. Not so alone after all. I continued on, taking the smaller more empty trails, looking for views and high seats of deep moss on rocky outlooks.

                After a few hours of hiking and getting higher and higher I realized the flaw in my plan: I hadn’t eaten anything and I hadn’t brought any food. (Though of course I’d brought water, I’m not a complete idiot.) But I didn’t want to leave the views and the wildflowers and the air. It was at that point that I noticed the tiny knife and fork symbol next to some of the destination names on the trail signs. Could there really be food there? Taking a gamble I decided to go on instead of back and after a last (to me epic) push, I found an alpine café at the top of the world where I happily collapsed and spend the next two hours eating everything and drinking radler, admiring the mountains and the silence.

                Down at last I showed my host where I went on the map. Her response was very ‘oh yeah, that’s not far, okay…’  But to me, wearing Converse and jean shorts, without sunscreen, sunglasses, food, or any clear or even vague idea of what I was doing or what I would find, (not to mention being terrifically out of shape and in 90 degree weather), it felt like it had been an epic journey into fairyland.

                The next night I stood by one of the little water wells dispensing a constant stream into a wooden trough on the upper roads, cold and delicious, and watched the sky fade to dusk and the orange light leave the mountain tips a misty purple. There were cherry trees overhanging the burbling fountain and a brown cat chased large June bugs and fireflies. Then a full moon rose over the opposite peak, perfectly round and breathtakingly white, and all the world was bathed in silver and connected in moonlight. I would have loved to be on a peak to see that.

                I officially want to go backpacking in the Alps next summer. Not wearing Converse. Who wants to come?

That would be the moon