Alpine Panorama Trail - Nothing but Rain

The sleepy glimpse outside doesn't discover much new. And not much positive.

It is still gray and wet, even if the rain has taken a short break. The farewell from the hut staff is affectionate, we laugh about yesterday's evening, which also brought a few surprising insights.

I am now back in Appenzell Ausserrhoden. The relationship of the two cantons is unknown to me, except that Innerrhoden is Catholic and Ausserrhoden Protestant. My report on the tourist goings-on in Appenzell immediately triggers displeasure. "Typical Catholic. Always just profit in mind! That would be quite different here."

I find it surprising and very funny.

 

Fog, clouds, rain

Another hike through a cobweb of fog and rain. The path to Schwägalp is wide and pleasant to walk, but what is brewing above is less pleasant. But I expect a nice hike to Lutertannen and over the Risipass viewpoint to Stein im Toggenburg. It's not the first time I've been bothered by rain and fog and snow, be it in Colombia or elsewhere.

Meadows and alpine pastures, near-natural fens and coniferous forests change in colorful succession, the guide claims. I would rather question the colorfulness in view of the cloudy sky.

The restaurant on the Schwägalp is despite the bad weather, well attended. I walk by, and after less than five hundred meters the expected begins: rain in all forms of moisture. Sometimes it drizzles, sometimes it hits me like a judgment from God.

But I do not care, so I follow the sometimes downward, then again steeply ascending hiking trail. Not surprisingly, after a short time it leads off the road again across completely soaked high grass, beating me around the legs. But what the heck, eventually everything gets better.

 

 

Weather as a metaphor

It's not really pleasant, however, after a while you develop a stoic relationship to the weather.

Which serves quite well as a metaphor for life itself. In times like these (which also keep me busy while hiking), there aren't many ways to avoid the issues of the day. You can, of course, set yourself to mute and deaf, ignore everything promoting unrest and doubt and pessimism, but that only works to a certain extent.

I tried it a few months ago, locked out everything media-related for a week to bring my anger level back to normal. It even worked to some extent, but as soon as you click back into the world, the avalanche is back. The pandemic has intensified a lot of things that were already there before. Many things have been lying dormant, waiting for the right time, so that now, as the limits of what can be said have been pushed, the old hatreds come out. Cracks run through society, life worlds collide, conflicts erupt. Not good.

A better option, perhaps the only one, is to develop a certain composure. A thick skin against everything Trumpian in the world, everything that is going wrong at the moment, causing fears, generating doomsday scenarios. You cannot/should not get angry about everything, even if it is difficult.

The goats at the roadside show how it's done. What do they care about the weather? Or anything else. The main thing is a bit of almost dry ground (it has stopped raining in the meantime), food galore and a few friends and relatives to have a good time with.

 

That's why the weather capers during hiking are sometimes annoying, but it's no point giving the finger to the rain and fog. So I keep walking and don't care about the black sky, which has conspired against me again today. I bet that in a few minutes it will pour again.

 

Snow fields, swamps

Even though it is not a glorious chapter for today's weather, the wet landscape radiates a strange beauty. Like a picture painted by a depressed painter who has just white, gray and greenish colors on his palette. It is enough to depict a rainy, foggy day in the Alps in all its facets. One could be infected by this melancholy, but actually there is nothing more beautiful than this very spectacle of the elements.

How boring is a beautiful day with blue sky and bright sun, but probably I just try to make a jewel out of a lousy day. Well then ...

 

The love of the sad-wet landscape stops at the latest when the path leads through spring snow and soggy swamp soil. Obviously, I might have faced a problem here a few weeks ago, so setting the start date for early June was the right thing to do.

My shoes are sinking into the wet ground, sometimes I have trouble getting my feet out of the suction of the ground. This is what is being meant by the near-natural fens? Eventually the path turns off in the direction of the Risipass, of course it rains again, which is a bit stupid, because there is no longer anywhere to sit down.

So I keep walking, putting one foot in front of the other, trying to forget the conditions and thinking of a dry place in Toggenburg, the valley that was soon to appear. It reminds me of skiing vacations on the Sellamatt, of the dining room in the hotel that always smelled of nothing but French fries, of a bad lumbago and other circumstances that must remain unsaid here. A great time.

 

 

Wet wet wet

After the Risipass, the hiking trail turns - how could it be otherwise - back onto the dripping meadows. My shoes look very wet and very worn in the meantime, so I decide to take the road the rest of the way.

 

Although my knees, as always, react very ungraciously to downhill asphalt roads and soon begin to hurt like hell, I follow the countless bends down to the valley. A few cows greet me, have lined up in a neat row just for me as it seems. I feel welcomed, take off my hat and mooo to them. But this does not really lead to reactions. You can almost feel what's going on in their strange brains: Another weirdo out for a walk in this weather.

I have to agree with them.

 

The day's destination, Stein, looms in the valley, as much spidered in fog and haze as anything else, but I'm sure the Hotel Ochsen will turn out to be the guesthouse I imagine in my dry and warm dreams.

 

The landlady has obviously expected me (hardly many guests will arrive on this nasty day), I may use the drying room in the hope that at least until tomorrow morning the stuff will find its way back to a dry condition.

I feel good, although the guests in the restaurant give the strange dripping wet oddball pitying looks. The hotel is old school, but the room is of surprisingly advanced quality. I find it kind of funny that the two beds are separated by a gap. It reminds me of old Hollywood movies, where even the slightest hint of any sexual activity in the bedroom was impossible (and would have meant an immediate suspension or worse if violated).

 

Matching Song:   Wet Wet Wet - Love is all around

And here the trail continues ... to Amden