A few years back I stayed with my nephew, Michael, in Milan. He is a keen mountain-biker so one day he packed his bike and me in the car and we set off for the Alps. Eventually the road began winding up a long, steep, narrow valley with low cloud cover. We were going up to where he snowboarded in winter and he had never seen it without snow. Now he was going to take the last skilift of the season to the glacier at the top, because he thought it would be a good idea to ride down the mountain.
Suddenly there was a break in the clouds and my jaw dropped. Straight ahead, reaching thousands of metres into the sky, was an awe-inspiring lump of rock which I recognised instantly. "That's the Matterhorn!" I squeaked. "That's in Switzerland!" A few hours before we were on the plains of the Po valley. It's quite a challenge to take in how small Europe is and how immense the Alps are. "Oh yes, but we're on the Italian side, so it's called something else." As if that matter(horn)ed. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that.
We got to the end of the road, to the rather ugly resort town (can't remember, Cerveto??) which didn't have a magical layer of snow to redeem it. Full of massive Heidi-style chalets/apartments/hotels. Bleak, uninviting and rather shabby.
Michael's plan: we go up to the 3rd station (can't go further because then we're in Switzerland and I didn't take my passport), then he'll ride down and take the lift back up as many times as possible before they closed (it was the last day of August and everything would shut at the end of the day for maintenance). So up we went. Milan was 34 degrees. Top of ski lift 8 degrees. Same clothes - shorts, shirt, sandals, thin jacket. He could have warned me. However, the view was too spectacular to worry about the temperature.
Michael got on his bike, said "See you later" and was gone. And there I stood, completely alone, at the foot of the Matterhorn, 3500m up in the Alps, next to a glacier. Not a person in sight, not a bird, not a blade of grass, not a breath of wind. Not a sound. The mountain and I were one.
I eventually noticed that amongst the grey gravel there were actually minute plants, like succulents and other tough vegetation with pretty flowers, none much higher than 3cm. But apart from that, bleak. And the mountain towered still higher.
I decided it would be best to go back down to Level 2 station, so I went back inside and got into one of the little cablecars. Did I mention that I am reluctant to climb a ladder? And that on the way up the cablecar had stopped for a few minutes and we had hung above the steep slopes, swinging gently to and fro? The prospect of doing this again was not exciting, but I couldn't walk down. A brainwave struck (all this communing with nature) and I put my eye to the viewfinder of my camera, effectively blocking out my surroundings and allowing my brain to forget the journey while it focused on the smaller view. Try it, it works.
No sign of Michael on the way down, but lots of dangerous looking paths at the edge of precipices. For all I knew, he could have gone over a cliff. Did I have the car keys?
How surreal is the next scene: I'm walking through a desolate ski station, 3000m up the Matterhorn, nobody in sight, alone in a place I've never been before. Down the steps comes Michael, pushing his bike, passes me, says "I'm going back up, See you later" and he's gone. I'm alone again. What were the chances of us passing on that mountain? Synchronicity?
There was still a lot of cloud cover and I hadn't got a good shot of the Matterhorn. I went into the Ladies toilets and on the wall was a magnificent tourism poster of the mountain bathed in sunshine, surrounded by Alpine meadows and a gushing stream. I took a picture of it and photoshopped the edges - everyone thinks I was there in beautiful weather and am a really good photographer. For the record, they were the worst toilets I have ever been in, and I could write a book on the toilets of Europe, or maybe a blog...
I count that day, when I was privileged to stand alone on that immense mountain in that huge silence, as one of the most important and valuable experiences of my life.
