An Oberland Châlet

by Edith Elmer Wood

The boys made no special preparation for the trip except to have the soles of their boots well studded with nails and to invest each in a soft felt Swiss hat, warranted to stand any weather, and to stick fast in any wind. Each of us had strapped over the shoulders a light canvas Rückensack, containing the absolutely essential (reduced to the last irreducible minimum) for a week. We had planned to have clean clothes meet us by mail at Zermatt at the end of that time. The Swiss mailing arrangements are ideal, and one can send a good-sized hamper anywhere for a few cents. In the same manner we got rid of our soiled clothes by mailing them home. Belle Soeur and I carried alpenstocks, having found them a real help in climbing steep paths and even more so in coming down. The boys despised them as tourist-like and amateurish and would have nothing to do with them. When we took off our jackets we put them through the straps across our shoulders so that our hands (barring the friendly alpenstocks) were always free. We didn’t bother with umbrellas or raincoats, none of us being liable to colds.

We ate our luncheon soon after we dropped over the Scheidegg into the Rosenlaui Valley. The character of the landscape had changed already. We sat on a slope adorned by a group of Christmas trees and a highly decorative herd of cattle and saw our old friend the Wetterhorn in an entirely unfamiliar shape and looked with interest at the queer rock wings of the Engelhörner.

Having consumed our last reminder of Home and Mother, we pushed on, presently finding ourselves racing for the Rosenlaui hotel against up-piling clouds that obviously held rain. The clouds beat, but we got there in time to save ourselves from an absolute drenching and sat in a summer-house for some time, drinking a form of fizzy water which had evidently (from its price) been diluted with liquid gold.

If a baptism of fire is the critical moment in the life of a young soldier, I take it that the baptism of rain is the touchstone for the inexperienced pedestrian. If you preserve the Smile-that-won’t-come-off when your shoes are soaked through and the water goes chunk-chunk inside of them, and the mud clings to the outside, and the rain trickles down your neck—inside the collar, and your wet skirts flap about your ankles (if you’re a man you’re spared that), and the thick clouds shut out all the mountains you came to see,—why then you’ve won your spurs.

When the serious part of the rain was over and we felt that we could afford no more gold-flavored Apollinaris and had no other excuse for lingering, we continued down that water-logged valley. Frater and I kept up our spirits by singing everything we knew, from Suwannee River to Anheuser Busch, but it really wasn’t fair, because Antonio has a musical ear and must have suffered a lot. We saw some waterfalls, but were too wet ourselves to be much cheered by them.

We did get some amusement, though, out of a solitary French pedestrian who asked us if we had encountered any rain. The question was so absurdly superfluous in view of the rain-soaked condition of ourselves and the whole world, that we made him repeat it several times before we gave him a grave and final affirmative. I think he felt lonely and thought he would like to join our party, but we choked off his little attempts at conversation and shook him without compunction. One has to draw the line somewhere, and we drew it at making acquaintances with any one except the native peasants, and they usually drew the line on us!

Emerging into the Meiringen Valley into which the Rosenlaui opens, we quickly decided against Meiringen as too large and sophisticated a place to be interesting, and, moreover, several miles out of our way. There was a village almost straight in front of us which rejoiced in two names, Innertkirchen and Imhof. This was unfortunate, as whatever native we asked the road of always seemed to know it only by the other name. It proved an elusive place. We took the wrong turn several times, and it was beginning to get dark, and it was a long time since lunch, and this was our first night as tramps.

We were not made happier by catching up with the principal inn at last and finding it full. The other one, on the extreme edge of the village, seemed hardly more promising at first, for the landlady said she had just two rooms left, one with one bed and the other with three. However, a little persuasion reminded her that there was another little single room in the third story, if one of the young gentlemen didn’t mind. We were not disposed to be critical. They matched pennies for it, and Antonio was relegated to the loft.