Find Your Blick: An Alpine Adventure

When your travel buddy deserts you in the middle of a mountain, you have a choice to make: do you follow her to the local spa to be coddled for the rest of the day, or do you carry on without her?

I chose to carry on.

Poor Jennifer. She didn’t really desert me. She just wasn’t feeling well. We had taken the cable car to the top of Mount Jenner, and halfway down again, hoping to do the last 8.5 km on foot. In her bodily distress, she opted to ride all the way down, but I refused: “No way, not me. I did not come to the Bavarian Alps to do a wussy cable-car descent. I came to hike, and hike I will!”

She waved a cheery good-bye and floated away in her glass carriage, and I confess, I gulped a little. Me – find my way across the mountain and down to Lake Königssee, then catch the boat to Kessel, the bus to Berchtesgaden, and the train to Bad Reichenhall – without my GPS? Or Google maps? Without even my phone to look after me if I get lost? No cell service, no wi-fi, no homing pigeons… just me, a pamphlet, and a series of destinations? Me – the wanderer who can barely get from home to work and back again without an unintentional detour? Without a functioning phone? Not even one?

Yes, me. I can do this. I’m an Adventurous Adult.

“I’ll start by taking pictures of the bus and boat schedules,” I thought. “No matter that they’re all in German. I’ll figure it out. Now, which schedule is which? Ummmm, I guess I’ll just photograph all of them. Who knows what manner of bus I might need, wherever I end up?”

“Brilliant idea,” said the copy-cat beside me. “Thank-you. I think I’ll do that, too.”

And as we took turns ogling the timetables through our iPhones, it became clear that my new acquaintance and I were about to embark on the very same hike, to the very same lake, and the very same boat. And he had a map. And a friend. And they were smart.

Very smart, in fact. Retired lawyers who met as choirboys at the age of eight at Winchester Cathedral. And here they are, a billion decades later, traipsing through the Alps while their wives are hauling cellos and whatnot across Europe without their not-so-loyal caddies.

“Well, you might as well join us,” said Francis. And so I did.

Have you ever hiked in the Bavarian Alps with two elderly British chaps brandishing walking sticks and a hidden cache of m&m’s? They said they wouldn’t be offended if I found their pace too slow. Ha! When these men trot, they trot. And we had the most delightful conversations as I huffed and puffed my way from one switchback to the next, trying to keep up. We talked about choirs, Mennonites, Georgia, Morocco, Ethiopia, tea, Anglicanism, Shakespeare, family, education, charity, Bach, Tony Blair, faith, reason, hot cocoa, borscht, memory, pants, salt, bread… all of the important things, and a few extras, too.

And all the while, we soaked in the Alpine glory around us, pausing only occasionally for photos, “comfort breaks,” and snacks. When we stopped, we really stopped (I can munch a carrot while I walk, you know, but these guys were committed to hot beverages and cutting up fresh produce with pocket knives); when we moved, we really moved. They decided I needed a walking stick to compensate for my inadequate footwear and poor balance; then decided it was much too heavy for me, and they would carry it themselves; then handed it over for the treacherous spots and instructed me in its use (“let gravity do the work,” they advised). They would feel terrible, they said, if something were to happen to me. But they would call in a helicopter if necessary, or if we missed the boat.

The sky cleared, then clouded, then dripped all over us. We donned our raingear, gave children bonbons, and analyzed the melodic structure of a distant trumpet call. When the weather cleared and we emerged from the forest to see a great panoramic vista before us, the guys (one of whom learned some pretty passable German in six months, using only books, cassette tapes, and Duolingo) exclaimed, “Finally! A blick! We haven’t had very many blicks on this hike, have we?”

“A what?” I asked.

“A blick! A view. A vista. A beautiful scene. In German, it’s called a blick.”

And so we hustled from blick to blick, I with my trusty walking stick and they with their trusty bonbons, and I thought, “This is the best day of my life!” (Never mind that I thought the exact same thing the day before, while pedaling through Salzburg on the Fräulein Maria Bicycle Tour; who says one can’t have two consecutive “best days ever”?)

Why this unrelenting exuberance? Well, it’s so beautifully unexpected, even after twelve months of flagrant wanderlust. Who would have thought, a few years ago, that I would find myself spontaneously hiking through the Bavarian Alps with two strange men that I met while snapping photos of an unintelligible bus schedule? Who would have thought that I would set off on such a venture without a travel buddy by my side? Or that I would even find myself in Bavaria to begin with?

But I am so glad I did. I’m so glad that I’ve become the type of person who can look at a mountain and say, “I can do this, with or without a guide. I don’t need to be a follower any more.” I’m so glad that I can expand the experience to include companions I never would have met had I taken the safe and sensible route to the spa. I’m so glad that this magnificent world, and its variegated populace, are an open “blick” before me, and that I am not afraid to venture forth.

You have likely deduced by now that I did not perish, lost and whimpering, on the wrong path to the wrong place. With the help of my Hansel and Gretel, I found my way to my boat, my train station, my wifi, and my friend – who had skipped the spa, as it turned out, in favour of tea and a nap. After seven hours of mountaineering, I was ready for tea and sleep myself, and I drifted off, dreamily musing about whatever “best day ever” would await me the next morning. Each day, you see, brings a choice: to follow or to seek, to retreat or to advance. Ever forward, never backward – ‘til you find your blick!