Breathe

I can always breathe in Arosa. After the car ride during which The Boychen refused to sleep even though we purposely left at his nap-time, after the last 40 minutes when Small Boy’s admirable patience finally deserted him and he began asking “How much longer?” every five minutes and then arguing with us over the reply, after the mad dash to the sport store for helmets and sleds five minutes before closing, after the unpacking, I can breathe. A person can breathe up there, can breathe in big lungfuls of snow and sky, can breathe in this:

Yes, a person can breathe up there.

Out my window

This morning:

Raspberries

Also from several weeks ago…

A walk in the woods

We live next to the woods. Some of it is privately owned and occasionally harvested; some of it is a nature preserve with a pond, a brook, and ducks. There is a fox, there are herons. The boys treat it as their private paradise and go into the woods almost every day; it is my mother-in-law’s favorite thing to do with them. This afternoon we went on a mushroom expedition, or, as the Boychen said “memli looga” (Schwemmli luega, Swiss for looking at mushrooms). There was also dancing and tree climbing.

Corn harvest (from the last weekend in September)

So now that I have regained the ability to post pictures, I will be bombarding you with the pictures I’ve been wanting to post since we moved here; there will be more images than words in these next few posts.

A farm morning

I have not been withholding pictures of the new place deliberately; I haven’t been able to upload photos for some time now. Then again, I hadn’t upgraded Wordpress for forever, so I finally got around to doing that and lo! and behold! A farm morning.

The last morning of vacation

From my journal, dated Saturday the fifth:

“Last night I tasted winter in the air, winter sneaking in over the mountains like a girl sneaking in past curfew on tip-tap toes. This morning there is snow on the high peaks. The locals – our hiking guide Hans, the hotel owner Walter – smile, says it’s not really snow, just Zuckerpulver (powdered sugar) and it will be gone by afternoon. They are right, of course, on both counts, but it is there all the same. Winter: sending a post card from her summer vacation, telling us it was nice and now she is on her way home.”

Noticing

Many of Bern’s charms are obvious: the fountain statues, the clock tower,

the long sweep of the Old Town.

But there’s always something else, too, something waiting quietly to be noticed. The cool, narrow Gasschens,

the shop displays,

the tram lines criss-crossing the city.

Everywhere I turn there is something to notice, on those days I remember to notice. It’s like this everywhere; one doesn’t have to live in a five hundred year old city to stop and stare (though I imagine it helps). One just has to stop.

Evening outside my window

Being here

I am fairly sure that even after all these years, I do not take living here for granted. On every clear day I still stop and stare at the Alps
as though I’d just arrived yesterday.

But sometimes I’m reminded that maybe, maybe I do. Just a bit. Maybe I have stopped seeing this city I am privileged to call home. I recently posted a picture to my on-line writing group and got virtual gasps in reply. It’s not every day you see statues like this.


Except, for me, it is every day. These Bernese statues on these Bernese streets. I must walk past them four days out of seven. And I know they’re stunning – I continue to take pictures of them, after all – but I forget, I guess, how otherly they are, how utterly special. Sometimes, it takes another person’s intake of breath to remind me to sigh. It takes another person’s eyes going wide to remind me to close my own in gratitude. That happened to me last week, so I’m going to take some time to look closely at the streets of my city. Because my home, it makes people stop and stare. I should be one of those people.