The Internet is FINALLY working!

I wrote this post on Monday, but up here--at the remote, deep end of a valley hours from the nearest city with resident population > 50 persons or 100 sheep, any connection to the outside world has been fleeting and fickle. A lot has happened since Monday, obviously-- but I don't want to swamp ya'll at once with a week of posts. Also, I just went on a solo night hike (I know, I know, "does she EVER learn?") which was fabulous and non-life-threatening, but has left me pretty wiped out. I also have better pictures of the Alps than the ones below, but I'm too lazy to upload newer photos right now. So enjoy some morsels from way back on July 6th:

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(Our hotel: I'm on the 3rd floor, 4th window from left. I mean, I'm not there in THIS picture; I'm taking the picture, obviously. But my clothes are in there. Wait... I mean, all my clothes except the ones I was wearing when I took the picture. Oh geez, you know what I mean)





It is wild, secluded and indescribably lovely here at the Hotel du Mont-Collon in Arolla. Every moment we have a coffee break from class, time before class in the morning, and time after class before dark I steal away on a short walk along the various winding paths near the hotel, or just to go out, sit on a rock and stare at the Alps and all their rugged glory and inhale the pine-fresh, chilly air.

I sat with a woman at lunch today who was not, in fact, a part of the class I'm taking--a fact I surmised when I asked her whether or not she agreed with David Albert's analysis of the measurement problem and got in response a look of almost sheer terror-- but instead was a native Swiss who was eager to expound the virtues of this little, reclusive village. She explained Arolla is one of the few valleys deep in the Alps that is still "natural"; i.e., not overrun with huge ski resorts and monstrous hotels and oodles of touristy crap. That's why she comes here to read, and hike, and to breath deeply. It's sort of a secret valley, just one ridge away from the Matterhorn to the east, and one ridge away from the border of Italy to the south. She told me it was only a 45 minute hike up to the Arolla Glacier, a massive, dirty sheet of ancient ice wedged between the peaks just beyond here:


Italy "begins" at the top of these mountains.

I did manage to wake up early this morning for some exploration-- but I think most everyone woke up with me, when at about 7 am a scraggly herd of sheep with their tinkling bells and incessant (albeit hilarious) "MAAAAAAAaaaaaaa"s were herded past the hotel. I threw on my jeans and shoes and went out to greet them. I smiled at the shepherds-- a family walking alongside the sheeps with long sticks (sans crooks), and the mother bringing up the rear in an SUV, which had one tiny lamb tucked away in the back, looking out enviously at all the fun his siblings were having skipping through the dew and eating wildflowers.

After saying hello to the sheep I traipsed off through the folia down a hill to the river--at this point a happy small little thing splinking its way between a massive bed of light-gray rocks, but whose depth (so the warning signs said (I can't read the French but I can read the German. Hurrah!) ) could increase suddenly due to the operation of a hydroelectric dam somewhere up the mountain.

Tomorrow I'm headed for the glacier. 6:45 am. Should be great-- especially because I roped two other people into doing it with me. Though tomorrow, being in the company of others, I will have to suppress the overwhelming urge I have frequently experienced in these wild green meadows and snowy peaks and with the gurgling brook and the chirping birds-- to run around in circles with my arms flailing outward singing various selections from The Sound of Music at the top of my lungs.

I may or may not have already done this.

But the people hiking with me tomorrow seem like nice folk . I'd like them to be my friends. So perhaps I'll "refrain" from playing Maria tomorrow. Maybe.

The class so far has been great. I am getting to know people without any of the usual academic awkwardness. Maybe because we're so far out in the middle of nowhere, there's an automatic "Group survival" mentality and we all function more or less at a normal level of social acceptability. And though today most of the talks were about things I've studied quite a lot, I found that I enjoyed spending the time pursuing those tangential thoughts you usually have to ditch in real class time in order to stay on track...or I spend time thinking about how I would try to explain this or that concept, or what articles I would use to teach this or that argument. All very good stuff. And then we step out for coffee on the veranda, and there are the Alps. Just sitting there, all majestic and mysterious- like. Wow wowee wow.

Though now I have a great deal of reading to do and jet-laggidy lag is veeery subtly weighing down my eyelids...

hopefully the internet at the hotel will work tomorrow, so I can post this! I tell you, if you want to bring the nerdiness of a bunch of grad students to a forte, just try sticking them in a confined but gorgeous locale and then denying them internet access. Haha! In some ways I think the sheep are superior to us: they just wander up the hills eating plants and pooping on the street, with not a care in the whole wide world about what Michael Jackson's autopsy revealed.

And that, my friends, is real freedom.

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