Hiking at Schynige Platte in the Swiss Alps

         You can only get to Schynige Platte on a historic cog railway that goes so steeply up the mountain you'd think you were lying on your back. All there is in Schynige Platte is one large, late-nineteenth century hotel,

Hotel Schynige Platte from the back

a railroad station, a small tourist shop, and the Alpengarden with numerous paths twisting up the mountain through flowers from all over the Alps. Many people come to Schynige Platte from their lodging in Grindelwald to see that garden and to hike one of Schynige Platte's spectacular trails.

    If they get there at the right time, they'll be greeted by alphorn players, as Will and I were.

    Will (see blog post on June 3) and I were staying three days at the hotel. We arrived in fog. I immediately put on my boots and went for a hike in the fog. Nothing was visible. Were we in the Alps? So they told me. I took a long, steep hike to the top of Oberberghorn, the highest point at Schynige Platte, from which I had a breathtaking view of fog. 

    The next day I made the same hike to get a different view: a complete panoramic view of the Alps with Interlachen below, a breathtaking view of peaks, glaciers. tiny chalets, and the miniature city of Interlachen between two enormous lakes, one silver, one blue.

Part of the 360º view from Oberberghorn

    The wildflowers were at their peak. They covered the hills.

 Colors tumbled down the mountains, decorated the rock walls, carpeted the slopes. I've never seen anything like it. Tubular shapes, umbels, racemes, and weird spidery blossoms, fuzzy ones, dark ones, light ones, spiders and chandeliers and ground-creepers, tall one-flowered spikes, all kinds and colors and textures, an unending wonder. Some I recognized (columbine this big?! Pink bistort?!); some I identified (yellow gentian, Alpine rose); all I enjoyed.

    That evening the fog cleared, and the setting sun set the peaks afire: Jungfrau, Eiger, Mönch, and many lesser peaks.

    The next day, hiking across open hillsides, I heard, from a long distance, the alphorns. I could barely see the two players, but the beautiful long notes came soaring across the distance with eery distinctiveness, each note beautiful.

Alpenhorn players in bottom left

    On the third and last day—the day before returning to Paris for the flight home—I wanted to do the long hike from First back to Schynige Platte. The hotel personnel tried to discourage me. "You have to be fit," they kept saying. "It's a six-hour hike. Are you sure you can do it?"

    I was pretty sure I could. 

    And I did. It took two hours and forty minutes to get to First, including a thirty-minute gondola ride straight up the mountain. I started on the trail at 11:00. The weather was good, and the views were magnificent—the glacier-dotted Alps, the snowy peaks of Jungfrau, Eiger, and Mönch, the flower-strewn hills, a fast-running stream burbling down the mountain. Birds, bees, and, at first, lots of hikers, most of whom I left behind at the trail crossing called Faulhorn, just before the highest point. The trail started wide and gravelly but narrowed as I hiked and turned small and rough on the downhill with lots of places that called for fancy footwork. At one point I went down the mountainside on narrow stone steps to—surprisingly—a cafe, where I stopped for a coffee before continuing another two hours.

    In the vicinity of Schynige Platte trails again, I was walking far above Intelfed, the summer pasture, stunningly situated on a grassy slope under the Alpine peaks. At one point I walked through a herd of beautiful Swiss cows on both sides of the trail, so close I could have petted them. The music of cowbells was lovely.

    It was 5:10 when I got back to the hotel. I took off my boots, poured hot water into the antique basin in our room, and soaked my tired feet. 

                                                                                    Photo by Will Holton

Then I joined Will for a well deserved beer on the porch.

    It was the best day of the entire three-week trip to Europe.

    

The Cruise

    The center of this trip Will Holton had invited me on (see post on June 7),  after a few days in Paris and in Lyon and before a week in the Swiss Alps, was the ten-day cruise on both the Saône and Rhone rivers in the south of France.

    It started well. The first day I did a wine-tasting at a vineyard in Bourgignon and learned all about small-plot vineyards that covered the hillsides and the making and bottling of wine. The next day I attended a cooking demonstration by Philippe, a chef at a three-star Michelin restaurant, Georges Blanc.

The next day I made a bicycle excursion along the banks of the Rhone.

    The next day I tested positive for COVID. 

    The next day Will, too, tested positive.

    We were told to go to our cabin at once, shut the door, and not emerge for six days, which would be the disembarkation day of the cruise, anyway. 

    So I missed kayaking under the Pont du Gard. We missed the dinner and concert at the Palais du Pape in Avignon. I missed wine tasting at Chateauneuf du Pape. And so on.

    We were confined in a ten-by-ten-foot cabin. Choosing meals from each day's menu became a big event. I ate on my bed. Will ate at the narrow counter. I had several very good books on my Kindle and a paperback book about Jewish seamstresses at Auschwitz, which Will, who hadn't brought anything to read and is a history buff, was glad to have. My sister had given me a jigsaw puzzle to take with me, so that occupied me for a couple of days.

And I had plenty of time to catch up with my journal. Neither of us was badly sick, but we did also rest a lot.

    We spent time on our balcony watching the swans on the river and the towns and vineyards we passed.

Will was interested in the many, many écluses, or locks, we went through. The worst times were the hours in port when another cruise ship pulled up next to us, cutting off not only any view but even all but a tiny strip of sky.

The dense enclosure made our tiny space feel even smaller.

    So we passed the time, and the day came when we opened the door and walked into the hallway, then down the gangplank and off the ship and were on our way to Switzerland.

    Would I recommend Scenic Cruises? I hardly know what their cruises are like. All I know is that they fed us well when we were confined, that the personnel were sympathetic, and that everything that we didn't do sounded like a lot of fun.

    

    

An Important Interruption in Tales of My Journeys

    The stone fly is a tiny but important bug. It serves as an indicator species for the health of an ecosystem.

    "Indicator Species" is the title of a giant interactive steel sculpture of a stone fly by Ela Lamblin (my son), 

Drawing of "Indicator Species," showing the scale

co-founder, with his wife, Leah Mann, of their performance troupe, Lelavision. The sculpture was commissioned by Burning Man 2020, but the event was canceled due to COVID. Now, two years later, the sculpture is slated to appear at Burning Man 2022.

    Before Burning Man, though, on August 12-14, the sculpture will be the central focus of a BIPOC festival, organized and coordinated by Leah, at Vashon Island's Mukai Farm and Garden. Including drum circles, yoga, meditation, dance performances, Taiko drummers, West African music, South American music, participatory arts activities, maker spaces, panel discussions, karaoke, and free organic food, it's a festival centered around the stone fly and "Indicator Species" and the environmental awareness they evoke.

    The economy of 2022, however, is not the same as the economy of 2020. If you haven't kept up with the soaring costs of steel, you certainly know the higher cost of, for instance, gas. The budget Ela submitted for his 2020 grant covered 2020 costs, but the grant is woefully inadequate for the design, engineering, fabrication, transportation, and installation of the same sculpture today.

    Thus Lelavision has started a Kickstarter campaign, hoping to make up the difference. Their goal is $10,000, a realistic assessment of the increased costs. The campaign ends in three days. You can help them meet their goal by contributing to it (go to Kickstarter.com and search for "Indicator Species by Lelavision") or by writing a check (tax-deductible) to their umbrella organization, Jack Straw (Jack Straw Cultural Center, 4261 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle WA 98105-6999), mentioning Lelavision in the memo line. 

    This is the second large sculpture and multi-day festival Lelavision has sponsored. The first, Created Commons, presented in a West Seattle park, was built around Ela's sculpture "Interspecies Communication," also seen at Burning Man 2017. For a glimpse of this spectacular event, similar to the planned event in August this year, go to lelavision.com and click on "View pictures from 'Created Commons Westcrest Park.'" 

    Kickstarter works by little donations from lots of people as well as generous donations from others. The campaign ends in three days. I hope you can help. As Ela and Leah say on their web site, this is a time when creative, restorative experiences, such as the festival on Vashon centered around "Indicator Species," are especially needed. Let's help make it happen!

Ah, Paris!

     Ah, Paris! City of sensual delights and of history—political, literary, and from the arts—at every turn.

     The interior of La Sainte Chapelle was drenched in color. The tall, narrow, stained-glass windows that form the walls of the narrow nave saturated the chapel with rich reds and blues that floated on currents of music as the pianist played Schumann, Grieg, Massenet, something from a contemporary composer who was in the audience, and another Schumann piece that she played from her heart and from memory. The air was filled with aural color, and if the hundreds of small sections of stained glass told Bible stories, the chords and trills of the piano created other stories. It was a concert of sensual delights.

    The best of French cuisine was also a sensual delight. The lunch my traveling partner, Will Holton, and I had at the one-star Michelin restaurant la Granite started with an amuse-bouche in three parts, to be eaten in a particular order as directed by the wait person, each with such a complexity of tastes I had to stop with each bite to allow my mouth to contemplate the experience. And so it went, course after course. Something with rooibos. Turbot in a red sauce (that might have been the rooibos). Ice cream in a salad. Burned bread crumbs on a side dish that somehow didn't taste burned. Textures as varied as the flavors—crunchy, smooth, liquidy, thick, thin, creamy, hard, soft—on and on. Each dish a marvel. Something sweet with main dishes. Vinaigrettes with a dessert. How did they make it all work?

    At the Musée d'Orsay, I saw, among other famous Impressionist paintings, Manet's "Déjeuner Sur l'Herbe"—the one with the naked woman picnicking with two clothed men—and another version by Manet in which the three women at the picnic were clothed, in long, heavy, Victorian dresses and bustles. No wonder, I thought, the other woman had taken off her clothes. I would have, too.

   In the evenings people thronged the streets and crowded the outdoor cafes and restaurants, drinking, smoking, talking, flirting. I had read how hard it was on Parisians not to be able to sit at their cafes during COVID, but I didn't understand quite what that meant until I saw how Paris comes alive at night. It was a young crowd, as though COVID had left only young people in Paris. And they all seemed to smoke. We could hardly eat dinner, at these outdoor places, without cigarette smoke drifting around us. 

    Driven around the city on a Tuk-Tuk tour, in a little open-sided electric vehicle wielded by a driver named Habib, I felt like I was in Midnight in Paris. Here we were at the excavated Roman arena, where gladiators fought lions. Then we were at Le Procope,

Le Procope

the cafe where coffee was introduced to France in the eighteenth century and where revolutionaries plotted the French Revolution and Benjamin Franklin charmed French women. And, of course, Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower and Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe, but my favorite stop was at Les Deux Magots, the famous cafe of literary greats whom I had read as a student of French literature. Here Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Gide, Giraudoux, Picasso, Hemingway, Sartre, Beauvoir, and, now, Diana Coogle, Will Holton, and Habib, have had their tiny cups of espresso. 

At Les Deux Magots                (photo by Habib)