Badenin Aargau is a flourishing watering-place, whence I was glad to make my escape a few years ago in the last days of March.
I had wired to the information bureau at Arosa, asking how long I might expect to find good snow. The answer came: “Till the middle of May,” which sounded boastful, in fact rather alarming, by promising so very much. But why should I malign those good people? I found heaps and heaps of snow, enough to satisfy all reasonable requirements till the middle of June.
My little daughter kept then a small paper box, in which she stored up all the fine weather I might wish to apply for. On fair terms of purchase she “let out” a certain number of fine days—as many as she thought I might be allowed—to take me to Arosa and thence to Bellinzona, where I was to join her and her mother on the way to Brissago on Lago Maggiore.
There certain open-air orange and lemon groves I knew of awaited us and a blossoming aloe near by on the way to Ascona.
To swoop down the Bernardino pass upon Mesocco on ski and land a few hours later on the banks of Lago Maggiore, after crossing the Rhaetic Alps from Arosa to Hinterrhein, tickled my fancy. My line would be from Arosa to Lenzerheide, along the Oberhalbstein valley to Stalla, otherwise called Bivio, thence to Cresta Avers, and somehow along the Madesimo pass to the Splügen road, and then east to Hinterrhein, and across the Bernardino pass through the village of that name to Mesocco. The whole thing could be done on ski. It would nowhere take me over glaciers. I should do this alone, carrying my pack, sleeping every night in a comfortable bed, and tramping by day on ski like any ordinary summer vagabond wasting his shoe-leather on the hard high road.
I could imagine nothing pleasanter. I should not take off my ski till the last strip of snow sticking to the edge of the Mesocco road gave way and should bring my navigation to a standstill upon the characteristic mixture of mud and gravel found on post-roads during the spring thaw. There is no small charm in slithering upon snow getting thinner and thinner till it is from two to three inches deep and tapering in the end to the bare inch, which is enough for the expert runner.
Spring has a delightful way of creeping and sneaking up the Alpine passes, using against King Frost every seduction that a soft, tender heart can devise to disarm a fierce, unrelenting spirit. It threads its way delicately from one warm, protected nook to another, and throws out feelers that stretch forth tremblingly from the rock crannies into the rough air.
Flowerets peep out here and there. The eggs of frogs float about in slimy masses upon pools of warm water banked in with snow. The released springs and waterfalls throw off their transparent scarves of iridescent crystal ice. The blackbirds hop about from branch to branch piping upon bare trees that are still sunny through and through, but do not yet venture to chill their feet by touching the ground still encumbered with deep snow.
The hard winter god, gradually coaxed into a softer mood, relaxes his hold upon the crust of the earth. What more delightful than this mixture of two seasons? Under one’s feet all is winter still. Above, spring skies, a scented air. Within one’s breast a heart yielding gently to the suggestions of a new atmosphere. To enhance the contrast and accelerate its phases, the spring god artfully turned the head of my ski full south straight in the face of the sun.
Thus it is within any one’s power to rewrite in this way for himself Hesiod’s “Book of Days,” and he will do it best if alone.