It is during the middle days of June when post-deadline/exam freedom is felt most intensely. It shimmers against the setting sun, fizzes up through the cheapest alcoholic beverages, and frequents every aspect of existence for a time. It is felt in the wind blowing through your hair, the sunburn on your nose, the kind of laughter that makes your sides hurt, glorious bike rides followed by equally glorious lie-ins. All takes place under June’s vast blue skies, of which the city of York produces many, skies which can be witnessed in their vastness first-hand, enfolding the vale, the world, unperturbed by library blinds. Remnants of the anxious deadline-induced palpitations do still raise their awful heads. The anxiety dreams are the worst, dreams where you have one whole hour to write a dissertation; submit a piece of paper to a large monster-like nemesis; incessant, desperate typing and then waking up in a cold sweat to realise it is over. And you sigh, and doze. Yes, it is over.
This freedom also amalgamates itself in the much-anticipated execution of plans. Plans envisioned long ago, during the shorter, darker days filled by procrastination and showery weather. Plans concocted under the premise of escaping completely. At the time, these acted more as coping mechanisms than anything. And our plan, that of my flatmate Sam and I, joined as we were by one of our old course mates, Tom, was to visit the mountains in Switzerland and Austria; to see and to feel under our boots that most jagged part of the continent.
On paper, we were to spend some days with the university mountaineering society in Arolla, southern Switzerland, then press further east for a well-established thru hike starting in Obergorms and finishing in Oberalppass, followed by a brief recuperation (aided by cheap kebabs) in Innsbruck before heading east again to Hallstatt, Austria, for another, more testing thru hike. The conclusion of our little odyssey would be Vienna.
One of the things which makes planning almost superior to the actual thing, is the speed and ease with which you can travel (through a laptop itinerary). Indeed, this plan may not have come into being had not the Ryanair gods on occasion proffered a £20 flight from London Stanstead to Basel. What at the time seemed a no brainer meant boarding a flight that, to our ignorance, landed us on entirely the wrong side of Switzerland. Never mind. We flix-bused our way south, under cover of night, emerging tired and hungry in Lausanne. We then caught a double-decker train east into the interior, as far as Sion. The landscape asserts itself, ruggedly carved and foreboding, the product of tumultuous, primordial battles beneath the earth’s crust. To the marooned, docile flatlander the shapes and skyline stimulate something quite primal within, a sense of urgency perhaps. Initially it might be awe, but this fascination progresses into something closer to anxiety. An anxious energy both to be in amongst it but also a lurking fear at the sheer scale of things.
Our camping destination for the first week, Arolla, sat at a casual 2000 metres above sea level (600 metres taller than Ben Nevis, a fact that was repeated often). Our days were spent scrambling amongst the lower reaches as none of us had brought any gear. The mountaineering society provided fantastic entertainment. They are a strange crew, though equally friendly and buzzing with energy. Indeed, mountaineers are a strange species, drawn towards these arcane temples of ice and granite which nature protects with all her most brutal gusto. They are eruptions which haemorrhage the otherwise gentle green surface of the earth, crystallised to briefly reveal the integument, the molten lava that churns within, a greater interior truth that has been buried, within us too perhaps, unwisely, and bursts forth beckoning us ever higher, ever nearer towards sanctuaries as yet unseen. We collectively sit in our tents, soberly light our stoves in ardent worship of something so peripheral, so absolutely meaningless in the grand scheme of things yet so incredibly vivid: brushing up against the only adversity which seems to mean something real. On this rock, above these very clouds, looking over this protruding ledge, the abyss beneath me, should I choose to jump, I will die. Kierkegaard called it the ‘dizziness of freedom,’ a most glorious simplicity exists in that exactness; one that excites certain personalities like nothing else.
Arolla was a week well spent. We trundled back down into the valley with our sights set on Obergorms, the start point of our first thru hike, a destination which Sam insisted was within hitchhiking distance. Three separate strangers delivered us there. To this day I remain sceptical of such a pursuit. Though equally, I must admit, nothing can quite invigorate the sense of human kindness like getting picked up from the side of a road, grubby as we were.
The next four days were spent trudging our way 50 miles northeast, to Oberalppass along the Wier-Quellen-Weg (Four Springs Trail). It was during this stretch of our journey that the dirtbagging clarity which we had been yearning for in the soggy, seasonally depressed depths of March emerged in all its philosophical grandeur. I do not doubt that it has been said many times before, but nothing effects such a reset as being outside both night and day, for days on end. There is something incredibly satisfying, though ephemeral, in the whole of your immediate happiness being anchored firmly in the condition of your feet. In their saturated state, after the storm, a level of discomfort is acquired that is miserable at first, soul-crushingly so. In such circumstances every aspect contains a certain desperation, like the stages of grief, before one can accept wholeheartedly this misery and doing so overcome it. The mere thought of dryness, warmth, shelter become tonics.
In many ways the thru hike returns us to more primitive designs. The complexity which characterises so much of modern life is wiped away by the necessity for such things as running water to drink, and the promise of sleep. By the time we reached Oberalppass, which turned out to be something of a tourist hotspot, not only had we become incredibly tired and dirty, but we had also attained that precious mental nirvana-esque state which signals, for a brief moment, the absence of needs which go beyond that of a toilet seat and toilet paper. What else could possibly exist that I might require? Coffee maybe.
Our next stop was Hallstatt, after a break in Innsbruck and a night spent cramped and hidden under some seats at Feldkirch train station on the Liechtenstein border (a detail I would have emitted had it not been so stupidly fun), which beckoned us further east and deep into the Austrian Dachstein alps. A further five days was spent in which bad weather demanded a mixture of self-deprecation and heady stoicism; we discovered that invoking Shackleton has a motivating effect regardless of what is being described (the odour of the tent, for example). Despite Hallstatt being a tourist honeypot, an hours’ walk out of the town dispersed the punters and we were left in a most serene solitude; this thing, these paths, these trees, these rocks, for a time belonged to us alone, our tread, our touch, our breath. Mountains possess the quality of making one feel ever so small, ever so insignificant. It is both humbling and yet immensely fortifying to assess this condition in a cosmic sense. It sharpens the perspective which give these days their meaning, makes memory concrete, and builds, in ever so many miniscule bricks, one’s own sense of experience: an inventory of skills, but also attitudes, people, tastes which vitally enrich our movement through life. Months later, recalling these events, I can’t be sure how much of the adventuring attitude I have managed to retain, it is much harder to manifest when the nearest proper mountain is at least four hours away and days are spent clamped to a desk. Though I suppose this doesn’t admit to something that is permanently lost, only latent, simmering beneath to be taken and supped on once more in the coming Scottish winter, where the grit demands its immediate attendance, returning to take the helm most brilliantly in the semi-darkness, all the more valuable for its urgency, as the pulse races and the crampons bite on the frozen mountain ridges.
Our Hallstatt hike was a circular one. It landed us in that most delicious combination among brilliant granite towers though never far from the sight and shelter of trees. Gnocchi became the staple, like the copious amounts of Rösti consumed in Switzerland, the carbs land in empty legs as diesel into an empty tank, gratefully received though quite flavourless. Over the course of the trip, our tent became something of a second home. It began to leak a little towards the end but afforded us ample protection from the elements on the most part throughout, angry cows included in such elements. Eventually, after the best part of three weeks, we reached Vienna, triumphant and positively haggard.
This account attempts to capture some of the dirtbagging experience which we attempted to dine out on over the summer. The quality of being outdoors for so long makes you think that this is how it was meant to be. And while the mini migration that we undertook has its immediate counterpoint in what remains to this day a painstaking and grievously sordid affair for much of the world’s population seeking asylum and fleeing plight and violence in all their awful forms often on foot, and insofar as we admit to holding this absurd privilege, travelling as a dirtbag reveals incredibly the multitude of unnecessaries that inculcate and suffocate our modern, civilised existence. It reminds the body and muscles of their functions, and the mind of its ultimate freedom. It is a rejection too (if ever so brief) of the comfort and convenience which we pit as the integral hallmark of the aforementioned civilisation, capitalism, choice after choice. Maybe it was collateral from the post-university grieving period but upon finishing the trip on the streets of Vienna there was a most definite feeling of loss among the camp. The questions which accompanied the consumption of an authentically crafted Austrian apple strudel concerned not only how much this thing cost (because we were all by this point skint) but also: what am I for, what is this world which I am to take to task, where so much satisfaction can be derived from the simplicity of being outdoors?