"Memories
Of summer days so long ago
People in the places
That we used to know
Oh those memories.."
~ Van Morrison
When I was 15 and again the next summer when I was 16, I went to Austria for the summer to ski and train as an athlete on a glacier. There was a group of us in our teens...6 or 8 skiers from the U.S... without a chaperone. We were in Hintertux, just outside of Mayrhofen in the Tirol. We were skiing from the Zillertaller Gletcherbahn...training with a German ski champion. It was a place straight out of a dream...an unblemished village. Our hotel was the traditional Tyrolian lodge...brown and white with flower boxes overflowing beneath each window. I subsisted on spaetzle, cucumber salad, French fries and apfelstrudel from restaurant on the first level of the hotel. Big white down duvets like huge pillowy clouds embellished the beds in our rooms.
When I flew open the windows in the morning I could look down on the furry cattle, with Edelweiss embroidered collars, strolling by. The gentle chiming of their bells filled the alpine air as they made their way through the village and up into the pastures above town. Mountains reached into the sky above the rolling hillside, rivers flowed past, wildflowers bloomed, hikers ambled by. I was a young girl from Maine, there for the summer...soaking it all in while at the same time trying to figure out the world. I had to get along with my fellow campers, try to live passably with my roommate, maintain my own independence, dance deftly at the Rathskellar...and navigate the boys from Minnesota in the other camp.
After skiing every afternoon I would go on a walk through the small village and take a right onto a trail. I followed it for a ways...until the trail led to a bridge and crossed a river and headed up from there. I never crossed the bridge (as far as I remember), instead, to the right there was a large rock that hung over the river...and that was where I would perch myself. It was a great spot. The sound of the river rushing under me was exhilarating and it was completely away from everyone and everything. It was the perfect place to collect my thoughts...to think about what happened that day on the slopes...contemplate what I was doing wrong with my pole-flip...ponder what I should say to the Minnesota boy who wanted me to go to Kitzbuhel with him. I would sit there for hours some days before heading back to the picturesque hotel at the base of the mountain. Hintertux, our hotel...my rock. It really was beautiful...like living in Heidi's hometown.
I still think about that rock from time to time...mostly when I am being nostalgic for my youth and the choices I have made along the way that have made me who I am. The rock was my beacon of light...my calm in the storm...my own place. I was in Europe, far away from home...but I felt grounded there. In my memory, it is a favorite spot that I hope to get back to some day.
I have a few other favorite spots that I can visit more often... one is the beach at the end of my parents' road in Maine...another is this cabin not far from where I live in Colorado.
In fact, the cabin is just down the road...and I cross country ski there a lot in the winter too. Rarely when I am up there do I see anyone.
This spot is about 3 miles up... you can reach it by hiking, biking or skiing up in the winter. Along the journey to this spot I do a lot of thinking. I figure out what I am going to say to someone who has posed a problem, I think about my next business plan, my family, our finances...our latest dilemma. There is always a dilemma isn't there? This is my sanctuary...my calm, my peace and quiet, my Narnia in the woods...the place where I work it all out.
I get the same feeling of clarity when I am at my parents' beach... when I look out into the ocean. Saline air, a boat slowly sailing by...ducks following their mother all in a line, it is the simplicity of the moment that calms my soul.
Today I took my 7 year old son up to the cabin. It was heart warming and wonderful to share this favorite spot with him. It felt full circle. He is the summation of a lot of my thoughts in years past..."Who do I want do I want to share my life with? Will I ever be blessed with a child? How do I get there?" I got lucky...and I have a husband...and a son now. Dreams really. So lucky to have them. Such an understatement. Really not sure how I got here. If I close my eyes...the breeze is in my hair, my knees are all the way bent so that my butt is touching my heels, my arms are wrapped around my shins. My feet are balancing/teetering/ gripping the rock above the river. I am in Hintertux. I am still 16.
Something about these favorite places seems to slow down time...the journey up to them...the time spent at them just seems to go by slower. The world, and my time on it, is not whizzing by. I cherish these favorite spots...and can only think that if one day I can not physically get to them, they will still be places I can go to in my mind...a mental oasis like the rock in Hintertux forever in my heart.
