Gstaad
Mountains in summer are of an astral beauty, the snowy, far away, shrouded in cloud peaks like old men wearing spats. Danger lurks with such men, as it does with mountains. Colin Thubron wrote about a certain peak in Tibet, and claimed that the God of Death dwelled on that particular mountain. One could say that about many places. Only last week more than 11 people lost their lives on Mont Blanc, and the numbers will reach close to 100 by the time the summer’s over.
The ancient Greeks thought the heart of the world was Mount Olympus. (Hades, of course, was the you know what of the world.) The icy lakes of mountains appeal to many as purifying. Hindus and Buddhists bathe in them, drink the water and carry it away. Up in the Arnen See, a few kilometres above where I live, I used to tell my small children about a terrible monster that lurked below the lake’s dark waters. The monster specialised in grabbing children and taking them under. Even during heat waves they wouldn’t dip their toes, especially when I would pretend that I was being pulled below. To this day, my little girl — not so little any more — ventures in only knee-high. My son, once grown up, called me a bullshitter and swam the length of it.
The problem with climbing a mountain is the mythology of it. I’ve been up Olympus, but there were too many tourist signs to feel Zeus’s presence, or even Apollo’s. Not to mention Dionysus, as I had no booze with me. My fellow climber, a karateka, complained about his knees from the word go, so instead of letting my imagination run wild about the goings-on of long ago among the gods, I spent the time urging him on.
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