Last summer, in August 2024, my wife Janis and I celebrated our 40th anniversary with a 12-day hiking trip to the Swiss Alps (dipping our feet briefly into France as well). I’m using my journals and pictures to recreate that magical trip. Here was an unforgettable day.
August 25, 2024 – Sunday, 9:15pm, the Laundromat
We’re sitting at the day’s end in a cozy 6-machine laundromat, run by the Drei Berge Hotel, down a couple blocks from where we’re staying, at the Hotel Alpenruh, watching trailers on our phones of the new Wicked movie that’s coming out in a couple months. It’s the halfway point of our 12-day trek of Switzerland, and washing clothes is the price we must pay to pack and travel light.
Wicked will actually be two movies I hear, which sounds like an unnecessary Hollywood money-grab to me. Hopefully, I’m wrong and they pull it off, because Janis and I adore Wicked. It’s Broadway perfection. Each time we’ve seen it (three times and counting) it makes us laugh, weep, think, and vow to be better humans, which is kind of the point of good art in the end.
Above the laundromat door is an ornate wooded plaque with the word Willkommen carved in it – a Swiss-German word meaning Welcome. We’ve seen the word more than we’ve heard it. The Swiss are congenial but reserved. So I’ve concluded that they post Willkommen on their walls so that should anyone ever question their hospitality, all they then have to do is point to the sign with a “What do you want from me?” look of exasperation. Anyway, they had our underwear and socks spinning in their machines, so we considered ourselves welcomed.
Waking Up To Yuk
After a run of amazing weather where I wouldn’t have changed a thing, we woke up this morning with Mürren boxed up tight with a fog as thick as packing peanuts, which according to our weather app, wasn’t going to budge for a couple of days.
At once, my mood went from devastrated to despondiary (remembering my Wicked, and the clever way the citizens of Oz mashup language). I’d already had a miserable night of sleep thanks to some combination of the one fly that survived the bedtime-massacre along with the Alpenruh’s hammock-soft, thin-twin beds (which was horrendible for my back.)
Knowing that there was only one thing to degrumpify me, Janis ordered me out to the balcony to have my coffee and quiet time with Jesus. That worked a little, but it was two largish, orangeish snails which came out to play on the balcony rail that saved me entirely.
I’d never seen such splendiferous snails. “Janis, look at this!” I called boylike into the room. We spent the next quarter-hour mesmerized by their color and intricate design, as if they had dropped in from Oz itself. Who needed boring mountains? With just a little added imagination, there were other wonders to discover. And with that, our day was completely swankified.
A Cloudy-Day Lauterbrunnen-Valley Walk
The Alpenruh made up for their beds with a top notch – and complimentary – breakfast built around an array of fresh breads and juices, eggs, and very good coffee. While we ate, we paged through our Rick Steves Switzerland guidebook and found he already had a recommendation for this kind of day – a Cloudy Day Lauterbrunnen-Valley Walk. So we took him up on it.
Lauterbrunnen, whose name means something like “by the clear springs”, is an enchanted village that resembles a miniature Yosemite Valley, nestled between two cliffs rising up more than 3,000 feet. On a clear day, you can see straight through the valley to the Alps on into heaven (like the photo below the title – that’s a stock photo taken by some other lucky stiff. We had gray, gloom, and fog. However we did have snails.)
It’s said that more than 70 waterfalls dance off those cliffs (though for late August, it appeared to us that many of those spigots had run dry), and rumor had it that Tolkien found his inspiration for Rivendell from a visit here early in his life. It wasn’t hard to see why.
The Swiss made it laughably easy to go from Mürren to Lauterbrunnen. We walked luggage-free to the train station, took a 10-minute train ride to Grütschalp, jumped on a cable car and five minutes later we were walking out of Lauterbrunnen’s train station onto its main street.
Being a gloomy Sunday, being that we were still in summer, and being that everyone seemed to have read both Tolkien and Rick Steve’s, the town was overflowing with enough tourists to storm Helms Deep. But if you didn’t look at them but instead craned your head back at a 45-degree angle and looked up at the green hills and bejeweled cliffs, you were fine.
We walked the length of the main village in less than a half-hour, then sat in a cemetery ornamented with the most picturesque flower gardens, you’d die to find yourself there (and many had done just that.) Jan and I sat there on a bench among the dearly departed, and conversed with God and Mr. Steves on what to do next.
Staubbach or Trümmelbach? – That Is The Question
The feathery Staubbach Falls, all 974 feet of it (the tallest freefalling waterfall in Switzerland), fell behind us in wisps of water maybe 100 feet away. There was a path you could take to walk up behind the falls, which sounded appealing at first. But by the time we got close enough to feel Staubbach’s mist on our faces, we discovered that all of Middle Earth had the same idea, so we turned back around.
But from our research, we knew there was another waterfall called Trümmelbach Falls a mile down the path (which might shed a few tourists) that would yield a far greater reward. Anyone can cut out a path behind one measly waterfall. But how many can carve out lifts, steps, and viewing galleries inside a mountain that gets you up close and personal to a glacial river that drops 460 feet in a series of ten thunderous waterfalls to the valley floor? Willkommen to Swiss engineering, my friends.
Why Rush?
The mile walk took us nearly two hours. Because why rush? When would we ever get to enjoy a stroll like this again, through a waterfall playground ornamented with lincoln-log chalet homes (and who are the blessed souls that get to live there and hang up their bicycles like Christmas ornaments right on their exterior walls? What lottery did they win? Whom did they bribe? And how much?) nestled on rolling meadows of a grass so purely green, not even Home Depot has found a name for that green yet (Secret Garden, Clary Sage, Dried Thyme, Olive Gold, Haven, Shamrock, Golden Moss, Raging Sea, Garden Spot… sorry, Home Depot, thanks for playing.) [Grammatical Note: I’m aware that it’s questionable that the last sentence is even a sentence, and I’m not really sure if it should end in a question mark or period. But it sure was fun writing.)
We passed a black and white cat leisurely washing itself out in that grass, who called out to us as we passed by Me-yah, Me-yah (like Swiss cats do), to rub it in, I think. But I could never lick myself, so my jealousy quickly faded.
Can you find the cat?
If It Can Be Imagined, It Can Be Done
Why we even passed a…wait for it…cheese vending machine! On my list of Top-Ten things I want to see in heaven, cheese vending machines are #8. Don’t you hate it when you’re out on your own and suddenly have a craving for a slice of Gruyere or Double Gloucester or just a couple cubes of Cabot Extra Sharp, but there is none to be found? And here we found heaven-on-earth right there on our Cloudy Day Lauterbrunnen Valley Walk.
Walking further on we came to a group of a dozen folks looking straight up, and come to find out, there were a number of base-jumpers leaping right then from the cliffs, so we joined the crowd in looking skyward. It didn’t take long before I was able to zero my video camera in on a person with an orange parasail gently dropping to earth right in front of us.
But parasailing is so last century. A few minutes later we suddenly heard the rush of wind above us. It took a few seconds to catch up with the source – it was someone who stunningly dove straight off the cliffs in a wingsuit, then sailed straight over our heads before unsheathing his parachute. How thrillifying!
But the highlight of the afternoon was still Trümmelbach Falls.
It’s Hard To Imagine How Anyone Could Have Imagined It
It’s half the height of Staubbach at 460 feet, but Trümmelbach can’t be seen as you approach it because it’s hidden in the cliffs. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could how imagined what we found there.
How could a person rock-climbing in the folds of that cliff ages ago, come across that vertical glacial river, cutting through the stone like a drunken snake, splitting up into ten murderous, tornadoes of water, then come up with the thought, “Hey, yunno, why don’t we blast out a network of a dozen caves that take you right up to the river’s edge, then carve out steps and viewing galleries all the way down?” Imagining it would be crazy enough, but then pulling it off… …unbelievable.
But believing it is the first part of doing it. Faith can move mountains, and the Swiss have proved it. They are the dwarves in Tolkien’s universe. If it’s rock, they’ll pretend it’s cheese, then cut, drill, blast, and carve their way through it. Then they’ll charge fifteen Swiss francs apiece for the pleasure of enjoying their ingenuity. Enjoy it we gladly did.
The Walk Back
Our walk back later that afternoon was as peaceful as the walk there. Along the way, I of course deposited $6.50 in Swiss-francs into the cheese vending machine, and selected a brick of Alpkase cheese (a type of cheese created by Alpine farmers, the flavors of which can vary considerably depending on the herbs and flowers growing in their fields which the cows feed on.)
We walked inside the Protestant church adjacent to the cemetery, whose bones trace back to 1488 (alongside many of the bones of those who once worshipped there), and whose steeple must grace untold thousands of pictures of Lauterbrunnen. It was lovelier though inside. The simple sanctuary was framed by a pipe organ in the front, and a series of stained-glass windows on each side reenacting gospel scenes, which flew me back to my Lutheran childhood, with all the sentimental serotonin spikes that accompanied the memory. The warm fuzzies were boosted by a basket of “blessing cards” left for visitors by the congregation. Someone imagined that would be a good idea, and it was.
Though the day remained stubbornly overcast, we made our final stop at a café called Base Camp, where we enjoyed coffee and tea with an exceptional apple strudel, sitting beneath three photos of cliff-jumpers in wingsuits with a quote by someone named Laska that read: “You only need to answer the damn, but damn important question: What I like to do in life? And then start doing it.”
That’ll preach, I said to Janis. You’d use the word ‘damn’ in a sermon? she asked. I quickly backtracked, because that would be scandalocious. At least in Oz.
As we waited for the trainride to head back up the mountain, the coffee must’ve kicked in because I playfully engaged a group of small kids sitting with their parents and soon I had them on the lookout for a giant gorilla named Willkommen who liked to knock cable cars around which passed overhead.
Meanwhile Back In The Laundromat
So in the end Rick Steves was right. A day in the mountains without seeing the mountains turned out just fine. All it took was two snails teaching us to use a bit of imagination, then we took it from there.
So as we sit here and fold our laundry, I wonder: But what is imagination?
What is it that caused Tolkien to experience Lauterbrunnen for himself, then decades later draw on those memories to envision Rivendell? What is it that caused early Swiss settlers in this region to look at three mountains side by side, and see a monk (Mönch) protecting a young maiden (Jungfrau) from an ugly ogre (Eiger)? What was it that inspired Frank Baum to dream up the original “Wizard of Oz”, and then years and years later, what prompted Gregory Maguire to reimagine the story with his novel “Wicked”, and then after that, what moved Stephen Schwartz to turn it all into a magical musical?
What triggers the architect to build, the base-jumper to jump, the cafe owner to bake, the artist to paint on glass, the Swiss to dig, or the act of turning a strange word for “welcome” into a gorilla then convincing a troop of children to play along?
It’s harder to describe than you might think. Tolkien himself tried in a long essay explaining why he wrote “fairie stories”, but the essay is largely incomprehensible. Aristotle fashioned imagination to be a bridge between the senses and reason. C.S. Lewis took it further, seeing it as a bridge between reason and God.
As a child, he was once reading a Beatrix Potter story when suddenly “the idea of Autumn” welled up within him. We’ve probably each experienced it ourselves. You find yourself enjoying a sun-splashed grove of red maples, or the scraping of dry leaves on a sidewalk, or the aroma of an apple pie baking in the oven.
Then all at once, out of nowhere, something else overshadows you – a longing or ache that you’d bottle up forever if you could, as if you’re standing in a doorway of heaven itself. You’ve moved from autumn to Autumn, from beauty to Beauty, from love to Love. Lewis later realized that every longing that life gives us, it can also fulfill. Why then would our longing for eternity go unsatisfied? Connecting those dots helped Lewis to come home to Christ, for imagination is clearly a tool in faith’s workshop.
Yet nontheists lump the imagination in the same bucket as they place the soul or spirit – it’s simply the evolutionary byproduct of larger cranial capacity. There is no mind, only a brain. (There is no Dana, only Zuul. Quick, what movie? See, there’s my imagination again!)
But I think Lewis was right. Imagination is a byproduct of the soul, which is linked to the brain for sure (and the body, and our senses, and our upbringing, and the art we consume… Ghostbusters, in case you’re still wondering.) But the soul is still more. Way more.
In the gospel we find what we long for: a magical world, life eternal, love unbounded, the defeat of evil, and a happy ending. – Paul Gould
Ask AI to give you ten suggestions for your wife’s birthday party, and it’ll spit out ten great ideas instantly, that will probably be better than most of yours. But is that imagination?
I think nontheists are exercising more faith than theists do when it comes to identifying imagination’s source.
“Evolution cannot account for this,” says Paul Gould in his book Cultural Apologetics. “The best explanation for why we make architecture and jokes, sculptures and gardens, and stories with mythical creatures is because we bear the image of a God who is the master creator, comedian and storyteller.”
He continues: “Tolkien, Lewis, and many others would argue that the underlying reality found in fiction, fairy stories, and fantasy is the gospel story….In the gospel we find what we long for: a magical world, life eternal, love unbounded, the defeat of evil, and a happy ending. All good stories point us to Jesus.”
And with that our laundry is finished and folded, and back to our room we go. I’d like to say I’m looking forward to a good night of sleep but the Eiger is in my twin bed, while my Jungfrau is in the other.
Bear Clifton, writer and screenwriter, is the pastor of BridgeWay Community Church in California, Maryland. His blogs, screenplays and devotionals can be enjoyed at his ministry website: trainyourselfministry.com and his writing website: blclifton.com. Bear is also the author of “Train Yourself To Be Godly: A 40 Day Journey Toward Sexual Wholeness”, “Ben-Hur: The Odyssey”, “A Sparrow Could Fall”, and his latest – “Living Under The Cross”, a collection of essays on the Beatitudes – all available through Amazon.
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