Chapter 13: Alphütte Ninja Monk
David, July 1
Blackenalp is named for the red-stemmed leafy greens that cover its landscape – known as Swiss chard in the States, and Blacken in Switzerland. Angela was the one who asked what they were called, since her parents grow it on their farm and used to force her and her siblings to eat it when they were little. She always hated it, because of the terribly bitter flavor, and when telling this to the local she’d asked, he gave her a mystified look and said, “Really? People grow that? Here, even the cows don’t eat it. I always thought it was a poisonous weed.”
After dinner I jumped straight into bed, despite the protests of Angela, who wanted to explore the farm and pet the horse. It was only 8:00, but I was so exhausted from the day that I was asleep almost instantly and remained unconscious for the next 12 hours, when I woke up lying next to a strange man who hadn’t been there when I went to sleep.
After leaving Blackenalp, I spent the rest of the morning fantasizing about making my life running an Alphütte (an alpine hut for hikers, pronounced ALP-hoot-uh) … . Spend the winters in the valley, breeding the cattle and making cheese. Then in the spring, bring the herd up into the mountains somewhere, churn butter daily and make homemade chocolate milk. Grow wheat so I could make my own bread, and then make dinner for all the locals and the tourists passing through. Speak German, English, French … and maybe learn other languages that seemed useful or essential as time went on. I thought I could be perfectly happy making a life there. Either that or I would be perfectly happy dreaming about making a life there. Hmm.
Late in the morning we reached Einwäldi, which had a grocery store (open on Sunday – unheard of in rural Switzerland!). There we purchased fresh produce, which was something we carefully restricted to times when we weren’t planning on going very far between shopping and consumption. In this case it was about 12 yards from the store to a suitable bench.
From there we went on to Engleberg, home of a famous Benedictine monastery and a ski resort that was disgustingly touristy. We realized, it being July 1st, that the summer walking season had officially started, and since it was a Sunday to boot, we marveled at all the old women and nuns out with their walking poles.
Incidentally, I can’t express to you the excitement I felt at discovering that everyone called the monastery a cloister. Of course it makes sense, since the German word is Kloster; but I was excited because I’m a board game geek, and in the German board game Carcassonne you place your meeples on cloisters – not monasteries. In order to indicate your meeple is a monk, you stand him on his head, so I tried to spot the monks at the Engleberg cloister by looking for the people standing on their heads wearing long black robes. I didn’t find any, which I must admit was a little disappointing. In Carcassonne you always take the cloister if you can. The Swiss must be lousy at that game.
We stuck around to watch some non-monk employees make Klosterkäse (cloister cheese) in the monastery gift shop, before taking the cable car up to the Trüebsee (like grüezi, this is pronounced like you’re saying “TROOB-zay” while vomiting). The Trüebsee is a small lake about 200 yards wide and 400 yards long that exists for the sole purpose of touristicular enjoyment, and was doing its job admirably. It was absolutely overrun with people. We considered camping by one of the three Feuerstelle surrounding the lake, but it seemed a little conspicuous, like setting up a tent in Washington Square Park in Manhattan, so we decided to try our luck climbing up to the Jochpass to see if we could find a spot there. We had heard from several sources that it was supposed to storm that night, so we wanted to set up camp before it rained. But when you’re in the kind of terrain that ascends 400 yards in an hour’s walk, finding a spot to camp is much easier said than done.
I should mention at this point that Angela was not especially happy about making that climb. Although she never would’ve admitted it, she desperately wanted to take the cable car up those last 400 yards. Dad and I suggested that she take the cable car while he and I walk, but she refused, since that would have made her look like a pussy.
At one point during the climb, we thought we might have found something suitable. I went to investigate, but determined that if (when) it rained, we’d wake up with a stream running through the middle of our tents. Only now I was a few hundred yards removed from the trail, and Dad and Angela were gaining altitude rapidly. Not to be outdone, I began scaling rocks as I veered back toward the trail. A few times I had to toss my walking stick over a boulder and hoist myself up like a ninja, throwing my legs over crumbling boulders and rolling over cliffs. Mostly I just wanted to make myself look sexy for Angela. Mission accomplished.
We reached the Jochpass at about 4:30, which was the time the chairlift stopped running. There was a hotel at the top of the pass, but as much as we’d been spending, I was adamant that we weren’t going to stay in a hotel, so instead we looked for an inconspicuous place to camp, which was like trying to camp in Central Park – any places that were inconspicuous at that moment, wouldn’t be for long. We found a little shelter underneath some exterior stairs at the top of a chairlift, and were very close to camping there until Dad found something waaay better. A few hundred yards down the hill was the base station of another chairlift – this one was closed for the summer – and the place was huge. We could’ve fit an army battalion in there and then stormed the hotel the next morning. Just when you think you’ve slept everywhere, along comes this.
Walking into the wide open sanctuary, a few rabbits and birds raced past us like we were in a game of Duck Hunt. Dad set his sleeping bag by the front of the shelter, while Angela and I nestled ours on the concrete launching pad further in, far enough away that we could have some nookie and not have to worry about him. As it happened, between the storm and the altitude, the temperature dropped down near freezing that night, so when I awoke rubbing myself against Angela, I was too cold to get out of my sleeping bag and do anything further about it. But we were dry and we were happy, and that’s what was important.
