Page 98 of A Season in the Snow
Alice went back inside still floating on a sleepy cloud. Maybe she’d take a cup of tea back to bed first.
Alice had been sitting in the snow for five minutes trying to get some bastard snowshoes on her feet. She was at the start of the Chänelegg Trail, a 3.6-kilometre round trip that was supposed to be one ofthethings to do in the region, and frankly, she was embarrassed not to have done it yet. But not as embarrassed as she was to still be here, freezing her butt cheeks off, knackered without even having gone anywhere.
‘Oh for . . . ’ Alice mumbled, and pulled her ski gloves off her hands using her teeth, using the smallness of her bare fingers to wipe the snow away from the bindings of the tennis racquet-like platforms she was supposed to wear. ‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ she remarked to Bear, who was lounging on his back, legs apart, like a holidaymaker under a scorchio sun. ‘Why are there so many straps?’
Eventually everything seemed to be in place. Her gloves were back on, although it would be a while before her fingers thawed, and she hauled herself to standing.
The trail began near her chalet, where the village ended and the slope lifted upwards into the woods. On this bright, late Sunday morning, though the sky was clear blue and the sun high in the sky, she seemed to be the only one partaking in this activity.
It was awkward to start with, the back of the snowshoes clacking together and the path narrow, causing her to keep stepping on her own feet.
‘Hey look, Bear,’ she said, bringing her knees up high to step straight down into the thick snow. ‘I look like you when we first arrived in Switzerland, remember?’
Before long, the chalets of Mürren were behind them, and they faced Alpine forests. Bear was in heaven, off the lead, running and pronking and rolling in the snow, messing it all up and gobbling great mouthfuls in lieu of having a drink. He stuck close to Alice, her furry friend, the two of them enjoying each other’s company.
It was a steep ascent through the thick trees, the sun silking between the branches and causing the colour of the snow to vary from indigo to bright white depending on where the sunlight and the shadows hit it. Alice tried Bear’s trick of eating snow to hydrate herself, but the powder was so fine it just disintegrated to barely a drop when it hit the warmth of her mouth.
‘This is very hard work,’ she said aloud to Bear, her brow sweating and her thighs and calves already beginning to ache. She jammed her poles in and out of the snow before her, trying to keep a little of the weight off her bad leg, and that helped a bit.
All of a sudden the treeline ended and the two of them stepped out at the bottom of a plain of thick, untouched snow and a clear sky.
Alice inhaled, stopping to take in her surroundings and catch her breath. ‘It’s just beautiful,’ she said. ‘We could take on the world from up here, couldn’t we, Bear?’
He stopped and leaned against her legs, catching his own breath.
She wanted to point this out to her friends. She was looking forward to showing them this place that was healing her. She took another deep breath, smiled into the sun and, energised, continued up the last bit of slope to the top of the hill, creating a cavernous trail upwards.
‘I think,’ she panted to Bear, each creaking, crunching step a labour of love, ‘we’re going to be okay. I really do. We have more good days than bad days now, huh? Oh my gosh!’
The view at the top was breathtaking – a winter vista of the Bernese Alps stretched proudly in panorama, the north faces reaching into the sky in splendour. Blue and white, and forest green, and Alice drank it in.
She was about to whoop at the top of her voice before she remembered about avalanches, so instead she crouched down and snuggled into Bear, her big bear who kept getting taller and broader, who was wet from the snow but still lovely and warm.
The breeze on her face, the colours, the cold on her nose, the sun on the snow, the absolute quiet except for the panting of her favourite best friend in the world. Alice cleared her thoughts, let her guard down and enjoyed every second of this moment.
