going home

As usual, I wake up a few minutes before my alarm. Outside, I know there are clouds over Mont Blanc, but it's too dark to really see much of anything. This photo is taken an hour later, when I am ready to close the door for good to my balcony, and my little room at the Mont Blanc hotel.

They start breakfast service at 6:30 -- for the early skiers I suppose. There are no early skiers. I am the first and only one in the dining room.

(surveying the bread product for one last time...)

I go light again. You cannot stuff yourself for travel. Savoie yogurt made with blueberries, oranges, croissant, and some new pastry that is delicious with a milky coffee that they sprinkle here  abundantly with cocoa powder. Oh and honey on the side, just because I'm nuts about honey.

I'm packed and ready to go. I check the room ten times. I don't know why I take these precautions. I have never left anything in a hotel room. 

Downstairs, I look into the living room, the bar... I only once sat in either one. What a shame! I imagine it to be a comfy place to read, to people watch, to sip one of their Savoyard aperitifs which seem always to be made with fizzy wine, and blueberry liqueur. But I never did it here. Not enough time.

I ask the desk staff how early they begin to fill up for the winter. I'd made my own reservation in September. Is that when one must decide on February travel? Yes -- he confirms what I already know. French school vacations, skiers' high season. Do older people plan vacations six months in advance? Think of all the body parts that can fail you in that amount of time! Ah well, to lead a full life, one must take risks.

My ride to the airport is here. A young woman is driving. I sit back in the car that's always large enough to accommodate skis and I lose myself in thought. She asks me if I am okay. I smile. There is a beautiful mist over the valley. The kind that begs for a walk with a camera. Maybe I make a mistake in coming to the mountains only in winter. May Alpine flowers, October fields of gold -- I never see them. Fact is, Spring and Fall are beautiful seasons where I live. It would be hard to leave then.

The question that will remain unresolved for me for a while is whether to come back to Chamonix. I loved the walks. I loved the food. I loved my little room at the Mont Blanc, with a view toward the mountains, and I loved the muscle kneading at the end of a hiking day. I'm not sure that I loved Chamonix.

On the one hand, it really stirred deep feelings of time and place. Fifty years ago, I hiked and skied with my friends in the Polish mountains. Primitive shoes attached with primitive bindings to primitive skis. Run back another 50 years, or 100 years, and I would have been skiing/hiking like this (picture from the Refuge yesterday in Montenvers):

Chamonix is full of such reminders, binding the place to a past even as it tries to imagine a future (one with probably less snow). This I find poignant and meaningful. We are all connected to our past and anxious about our future! Life isn't only about the here and now. Chamonix is also full of children (at least during French school holidays). It may be a serious winter destination for mountain people and off piste skiers, but it's also a place to bring your little ones. They're welcome everywhere.

At the same time, Chamonix feels crowded. The main drag stays packed from mid afternoon onwards. Not quite Times Square, but inching that way! They come out to eat and shop and stroll and there are just too many of them (us?). I knew that the town was not small, but still, it's unsettling to see so much humanity in a mountain destination where you seek refuge away from humanity! 

Yes, Chamonix gives you choices -- where to eat, where to walk, where to have your winter adventure. But does the visitor who comes only for a week need all that choice? Last year I was happy as a clam eating every single dinner just in my hotel. Fresh and honest! No reservations needed! That was fabulous.

And yet...The history, the mountain culture, the architecture, the Alpine agricultural presence and gastronomical evolution -- it's what I loved about this place. (That and the back kneading!)  Our own winter resorts haven't the pastures for goats, the photos of women wearing long dresses to ski 150 years ago. There's a reason why I travel so far to take these mountain walks.

I'm at the Geneva Airport in good time. The flight to Paris is flawless, the next layover -- not too long. But now it gets a little crazy. 

It's going to be one of those returns! The flight from Paris has technical issues. At least a two hour delay. Not much chance of catching my connection then to Madison. I can overnight in Paris at one of those horrible airport hotels where unhappy people stay because they've been bumped off their flights. Or I can reroute through Minneapolis. I tell the agent that I do not want my suitcase lost. He assures me that the suitcase, checked in, will follow me. The suitcase, of course does not follow me. It goes to Detroit. 

In Minneapolis, my connecting flight to Madison is delayed as well. I doubt I'll be home before midnight. Ed calls and tells me that the farmette is so iced over that you can hardly move. I'm telling you, it's going to be one of those returns.

Nonetheless, I'm so happy to going home to my beloveds, and yes, so happy to have had a week in Chamonix. Ed always says travel is pointless unless you really learn something, big time. I think I did.

And that's a very good thing.

With love...