The Escape Artist

Travel is overstimulating. Those on long-term wanderings suffer from such a barrage of sensation and excitement it can jade us within weeks. Anybody exploring on their own experiences a particularly acute version of this condition. Having just survived a cacophony of beer, bad music, and more beer at Stuttgart’s spring folk festival, I needed a change of pace.

My journey into the Lauterbrunnen Valley became a well-timed antidote to the endless bustle of city life. It’s a series of tiny villages in the Bernese Oberland whose residents have squeezed themselves in between and on top of the sheer walls of Switzerland’s towering mountains. Here I learned of a different type of solitude: not that of being alone in a crowd - an overwhelming sensation at the festival and my previous two months of travel. Rather, it was the surrealism of hiking into the Swiss Alps and not seeing another human being for hours. Instead of the barrage of noise that accompanies cities and tourist traps, every sound reached me individually. Gravelly snow crunched under my feet, birds sang in the trees and raindrops softly patted the leaves above me. In the expanse below me, back towards Lauterbrunnen village, the bells of feasting cows and sheep tinkled like wind chimes while the rush of the valley’s famed waterfalls provided a soft white noise.

Nothing else.

Occasionally I trudged past some signs of animal life: goats, sheep and cows. Upon approaching, the herds would lift their heads in unison and stare at me until well after I’d moved on. The whole scene felt like an odd version of Inception. I felt so out of place actually being in a setting that exists on the fringe of others’ dreams - a place that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien so much in the early 20th century that he used it as a basis for Rivendell in the Lord of the Rings series. It was unnerving before it was meditative. Once I could grasp it, though, I became completely immersed into my surroundings; I found respite that reinvigorated my drive for exploration.

I lucked out by showing up during the spring shoulder season. During peak summer and winter, the valley is crawling with visitors. Then the alpine weather swung rapidly between sun and snow, keeping away the enthusiasts of most of the region’s specific adventure activities. For the roaming type, this time in the Lauterbrunnen Valley is an ideal alternative destination to explore new mental spaces that one might not expect to find.