I often imagine it's the last day of my life...

A winter in the high mountains has shown me the tenuousness of life. But once we finally realize we don't live forever, well....that's our moment of liberation to really start living!

My neighbour, the incredible Swiss artist Helen Güdel is 89, soon to be 90. On Thursdays I walk down 100 stairs from my eagle's nest here in the high mountains of Switzerland and I take German lessons with her. She's not an official German language professor but Helen is an amazing teacher - exactly the right amount of discipline and praise. My two hour lessons generally involve second hand chain smoking, one hour of learning German and one hour of listening to wild stories from Helen's youth, her travels, her life as an artist and a lifetime that existed long before I was born. Did I mention she's almost completely blind?

I realize that while I feel more alive living in this stunning high place, so close to so many of Switzerland's 4,000 metre peaks, life also feels less permanent. Just a week ago we received the biggest snow dump in 40 years and spent two days with no electricity or internet (yes it was bliss). And today half the mountain slid onto the road down in the valley, a result of said snow melting. This combination of Mother Nature's wrath and Helen, still so full of energy and wit and yet also having lived so long - most days I can't help but think about life being tenuous.

So I often imagine a future when it’s the last day of my life….

I always visualize myself in a vast meadow of wild flowers, face turned to a bright blue sky, sun warm on my skin, all my favourite people and best dogs around me.

In this moment I’m not thinking of all the hours I didn’t work, or the emails I never checked, or the people I chose not to waste my time on. Nothing I didn't do matters.

I imagine it's my last few moments and I’m feeling so grateful for a life well lived, a life of freedom, of deep love and soul connections with incredible humans, a life spent dancing with wild abandon every morning and singing loudly and off key, decades spent walking the planet in awe of Mother Nature, so many women’s lives changed, me a loud voice always for those who the world tried to silence.

And in these moments I think, if that’s what I have done, if that's who I have been at the end of this one wild and precious life, it will be enough.

Helen reminds me that not only do I get to choose the life I live, but that I have a responsibility to other women to help them choose for themselves as well. As a woman of 89 , she has lived through an era where she had no right to earn money for herself, where she couldn't own assets or make choices without her husband's permission. And yet she defied society entirely - including choosing love over everything and creating an entirely new life for herself her in our little mountain village (that's an entire story in its own right!)

Despite the world's horrors I very much hope to live a very long time - but the bottom line is, all I get to do, all any of us get to do, is be alive right now. So I'm making this moment, and every one after it, exactly the moments I choose them to be. Because I can think of nothing worse than arriving in that meadow, sun on my face and a life time of regrets in my heart.

To find out more about Helen and enjoy her stunning art visit the Hosennen Museum in Törbel, Canton Wallis, Switzerland, where you’ll find her gallery and more information on her love story with mountain man Bruno.

The language of our bodies

Today my heart is full full full, more than I could ever have imagined. What did it take? A leap of faith and a willingness to continue following my dharma (life’s purpose) even when there was no reason to follow this particular path. Sharing the ancient practice of yoga is the place where time always stands still for me, where I feel fully in flow, when I know without a doubt I’m deeply connected to source. It’s the place where I can share the most of myself with others, with no second guessing, no filter and no pretending to be something I’m not.

If you’d asked me five months ago if I’d be teaching yoga in German, a language I don’t speak, in a tiny village, high in the Swiss alps I would have said great idea but how can that possibly work? It’s thanks to the open hearted, open minded women of Törbel that today, at the end of my first season of yoga with this incredible community that it all worked - somehow, in some magical way.

These five months together have reminded me of the universal language of our bodies, an entirely human experience that cannot be bypassed when you put people together in a room and breathe and move with synchronicity. Thursday morning yoga in Törbel has reminded me how little verbal guidance and information is actually needed to practice this ancient science and how real and authentic connection can be created without words.

I’ve been to many yoga classes over the years in languages I don’t speak and it was all good fun - the will to just turn up and move and breathe, greater than the need to understand all the words said out loud. The patience, understanding, welcoming and joy that this wonderful group of mountain women has offered me is beyond anything I could have imagined. And it kicked my butt to take a few German lessons with my 89 year old neighbour Helen, whose mind is not only as sharp as a tack, but who is an exceptional teacher with the perfect combination of discipline and reward. A lifelong artist (for real), Helen has perhaps missed her calling as a German teacher! After just four lessons with her I can teach yoga in German - as long as you have a good sense of humour and don’t need me to make a full sentence! And my absolute favourite word that I’ve learned so far in Swiss German (Canton Wallis dialect) - pfiffoltera - butterfly - perfect for describing badhakonasana!

After our last class of the season we joined for cake and coffee in the beautiful treasure trove that is the Hosennen Museum Shop, our makeshift cafe, created on the fly but nonetheless full of steaming fresh coffee, home made cakes, breads, sweets and more. With our dogs sniffing around for left overs and cake crumbs, the conversation a mix of German, English and French, laughter light and genuine with stories flowing, I am content. People think yoga is those crazy shapes you make with your body, but this - this sitting around with a deep sense of joy and gratitude in our hearts - this is yoga - the language that needs no words.

Wild skies and new seasons

It’s been profound spending winter in the high alps of Switzerland. As I sit on my insanely comfy sofa, my personal altitude is 1,534 metres. From here I have the most spectacular view on some of Switzerland’s highest peaks, including the Weisshorn, the seventh highest peak in this tiny country at 4,505 metres, watching over me in its full glory. And even though I can’t quite see it, I know the Matterhorn, possibly the most well known mountain in the world is just around the corner to the left at 4,478 meters.

By early November there was already so much snow I couldn’t find the steps down from my attic hut to the street below - the dog and I literally slid down to the road. As for my car - I just decided to wait until it re-emerged after the snow melted rather than dig it out. Advertised as a village with more than 300 days of sunshine a year, Törbel has lived up to its reputation this winter.

In all honesty last winter in the city, taking the dog out in the dark and the damp and the cold and with ‘la Bise’, that frozen, dry wild wind that sweeps across the Swiss Plateau, sent me into a deep depression. It’s REALLY hard not to see the sun for weeks on end and my moments of relief and joy were coming to the mountains to break the grey film of that city winter. It was when my business mentors commented for the third time that I seemed so light and happy and creative in the mountains and asked me why I didn’t spend more time there, that an idea was born.

Because I had no answer to that question. Why don’t I spend more time in the mountains? What is stopping me? Could I spend a whole winter there? Silly answers like, I don’t speak German, what if I get cabin fever, I don’t know much about snow, plagued me for about a week and then suddenly I was cleaning my Geneva apartment from top to bottom, had rented it out, packed the car and was on my way to Törbel.

There’s a few decisions I’ve made in this one wild and precious life that have felt fortuitous, almost as if I was in my own version of Paulo Cohelo’s Alchemist novel. Buying my eagle’s nest in Törbel was one of them. Every time I arrive and step onto the balcony with THAT alpine view it feels like a giant exhale. Perhaps it should be no surprise that I was due to spend an entire season here.

It’s the Equinox today as I write this, somehow I’m already in March and I’ve made it through an entire winter and am heading into Spring. It still snows sometimes, last week a heavy, silent blanket of soft fluffy flakes. The dog loved it, a moment of coolness to relieve her built in fur coat. It had melted within 48 hours and underneath the snowflakes were thousands of tiny white native crocuses, almost like a conciliatory tapestry covering the earth so we don’t feel too sad to leave the snow behind. 

The sky has changed, something you feel more within every fibre of your being rather than see with your eyes. It’s like my perspective feels wider every time I lift my gaze, as if the changing season allows me to see more of the planet because the light has shifted. Just last week we all woke up to the entire valley covered with a landscape of mist, as if Mother Nature herself had laid us a carpet so we could walk directly out our front doors to the Matterhorn. It made me feel like I was in a magical children’s book, but instead I was in magical mountain life, for real.

And then just yesterday there was a brightness to the morning sky that has yet to be seen this season. After the deep pink and orange streaks of Törbel’s unique double sunrise - here the sun rises over the Saas Fee valley, then heads behind Grächen and reappears over the Weisshorn - a brightness overcame us and 6.30am felt like 9.00am it was so light. It looked and felt like someone had switched on a high wattage light bulb in the village before we’d even had our coffee - the planet announcing that Spring is  indeed here!

In the vortex of Törbel you feel the change of seasons, before you actually see it. These days I can smell the arrival of snow. I never set an alarm clock because I can tell time by the way the light shifts in the early morning and I instinctively know when to tell the dog she has to go back to sleep. There’s a force that whispers to my soul at night reminding me to look up at the sky so I can marvel at the vastness of the millions of stars, shining so brightly, no city lights to dampen their sparkle. It makes me wonder if that’s what cities do to us, they dampen the sparkle of the human spirit, they unknowingly force us to forget our innate connection to the planet, dull our senses so changes of weather and season come as a surprise.

There are some places on this earth where we can’t help but feel most like ourselves. Could I have ever imagined that this little Australian would feel so at home in the high mountains of this tiny land locked country? The obvious answer is no. And yet if I think about how I was raised, a small child running free and barefoot in the bush, dog by my side, the smell of freshly cut hay and cow dung in my nostrils, sun beating down as I breathed in silence - it’s not so different from life in Törbel today. A million miles away from the country of my birth and yet I could be describing life in this tiny Swiss mountain hamlet. I’m reminded that in Inuit culture there is no word for Nature, human life is assumed as essential oneness with the natural world. If I had forgotten that after too many years of city life, then this winter in Törbel has reminded me of my oneness, a gift I will forever be grateful to have received. 

For the love of cheese

As Bouddi and I trundled down the hill towards home, the last warm rays of the autumn sun warming us, the familiar sounds and smells of the traditional Valaisanne black nose sheep wove their way into my consciousness - visceral reminders of my childhood growing up on a farm. I kept my eye on a dog I hadn’t seen before, a lanky Border Collie type, energy alerted to us. It seemed to be attached to a group of older mountain men sitting on the tailgate of a beat up red beast of a car, having elevenses. And by elevenses I don’t mean tea and scones but beers - Swiss style. Sometimes I’m grateful my German is literally non-existent as they commented on my dog. One of them piped up in reasonable French and we all made small talk, grunting for a couple of minutes about dogs, cheese and the weather in no particular language and I headed home up the hill.  

But this is Törbel and no connection lives in isolation in the vortex of mountain life. The next evening as I was about to climb the heart stopping stairs back up to my eagle’s nest of a home, I noticed a car trailing us - a hard thing to do in such a small village and not ideal in the dark as a woman alone. I gave a nonchalant wave and tried to start up the stairs with the dog. But the headlights flashed and the car pulled to a stop almost on top of us. It was Kort the ‘cheese-man’ from yesterday. He’d deliberately tracked me down to offer me his finest Moosalp cheese from the high mountain plateau that rises above the village. I have to admit, it’s not the first time I’d been offered such edible gifts - there was Tony Love (what a name right?), and his box of papayas way back in my university days. And then the suitcase full of mangoes I was obliged to bring back from Thailand as my ‘get well soon’ gift, but cheese? Even now I laugh at the scenario, me tottering on the steps, a bit desperate to get home, not fully understanding the randomness of the cheese offer, in the dark, from someone I barely knew and whose language I didn’t speak. I somehow managed to indicate that I’d be happy to pay, keeping it transactional seemed like a good plan, but all this earned me was a snort and a pinch on the cheek as if I was a baby talking nonsense. And so I thanked my cheese stalker profusely and dashed up the stairs with kilograms of cheese, including a 25 year old sample (had I heard that right?), and double checked I’d locked the door behind me. 

Such things don’t happen in cities where there are stronger social boundaries and the unspoken rules that keep you from ever giving or accepting anything from your neighbours and never really knowing who you are living with. All you ever really learn in a Swiss city is when you’ve used your washing machine or vacuum cleaner at the wrong time on the wrong day.

I debated with friends over gin and tonics about the cheese-gift (whilst enjoying it too of course), and we came to understand two important things. There is actually such a thing as 25 year old cheese and Kort’s Törbel Käse is indeed one of the finest. So if you’re ever Moosalp way please stop by Kort’s honesty-cheese-fridge, or better yet seek him out and grab yourself a wedge of this aged mountain delicacy. But what I really learned from Kort is that mountain generosity is pure. It comes with no expectations, and is born of a simple willingness to share life’s good stuff with others. And in a world where almost everything we do feels soulless and transactional, we all need more cheese without expectations.