The first time I realized mountains have personalities was the winter I spent the night on top of Pilatus, the craggy massif that overlooks Lucerne in Central Switzerland. Pilatus is a fabled mountain, with legends of magical healing powers and ancient red dragons. (In 1421, a local farmer said he actually saw one fly overhead and drop a dragon stone on him.) Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor involved in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, is supposedly buried in a lake up there; rumors say his guilt-racked ghost haunts the mountain in the form of terrible storms.
But I wasn’t thinking about any of that on the day, a few years ago, when we went to Pilatus. Steve and I were vacationing with a couple of friends. We took a terrifying cable car ride above the clouds to a 7,000-foot winter wonderland with a panoramic view of 73 Alpine peaks. Exhilarated, we laced up our boots, plunged into knee-high snowdrifts and spent the afternoon hiking through groves of massive evergreens. When the sky turned bruise-dark, the wind picked up and gusts of snow pelted our faces, we weren’t alarmed; we had reservations at the classic 19th-century hotel perched between two peaks – the Pilatus-Kulm, where Queen Victoria once stayed. We were looking forward to dinner under chandeliers in the oak-paneled dining room. But by the time we got back to the hotel, the snow was a full-blown storm. Visibility was near zero. The front desk was deserted and the cable car had shut down. Night fell and we picked our way through empty corridors, hoping someone had stayed behind to cook dinner.
There was one waitress in the baronial-style dining hall that night, and maybe one other couple.The lights flickered and we joked nervously about what a great setting this would make for an Agatha Christie novel. Then we tiptoed to bed. The next morning, the sky was clear, the busboys were busy with snow shovels, and the cable car whined back to life. We left with a greater degree of respect for the mountain, and also with something more – a sense of the mountain as alive. This week, we share more thoughts about mountains, as we return to one of our favorite shows from the past year – “When Mountains Are Gods.” I hope you enjoy it.
–Anne