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.