My last locum Sunday here today, and it was such a joy to welcome my cousin Dianne and husband Ian, who had driven down from Champex Lac to join us for the Eucharist. We had intended to meet up yesterday to see the desalpage des vaches in the Val d'Herens, above Orsieres. They had timed a week's holiday to coincide with this special autumnal alpine festival. I'd have had to arrive at 08.45 at Orsieres station to be driven up to where the event was to start at 10.00.
After three hours travel on Friday, I thought it better to lie low yesterday and keep some energy in reserve for today, so they decided to drive down and worship with us instead. Dianne and I have known each other for over sixty years, having been raised in the same mining village in the years of our youth. Both of them have remarkable careers in journalism behind them and we share a love of Switzerland and alpine life. These days I still have considerable energy, but fewer reserves to draw upon. All part of getting old.
As with other visitors while I've been here, they marvelled at the typical traditional Vaudois nature of Church House, with its all wood upper storey after the service. They couldn't be persuaded to stop for lunch as they had others to meet after an hour long return journey, but we did spend an hour together drinking coffee and talking before parting company. Then I had to get my affairs in order for another journey up to Villars to celebrate Holy Communion again for a dozen appreciative faithful in Aiglon Chapel.
With the roads being clearer, and no diversions this time, the drive up to Villars and back via Ollon, the shorter route, was easy and enjoyable, although descending a steep road with hairpin bends at twilight required careful attention, especially after the nightmare with fading brakes on the slower steeper descent via Bex, last time round. I sensed my slower speed was an annoyance to some other motorists, who overtook as safe opportunities presented. It was only in the home stretch I realised the supplementary read fog lights were on unnecessarily, and I was mortified.
Driving an old Subaru Impreza, apart from my aforementioned scary experience, has been quite a pleasure. It handles with the reliable precision of a sports car, reassuring when precision driving is essential to avoid trouble. It's as good as my VW Golf back home, albeit with lighter steering. Even so, it would have been far nicer to have been able to timetable and carry out a train journey to Aigle connecting with the narrow gauge mountain railway to get to Villars and back. Evening trains, like buses, are few and far between.
When I chatted with our English organist at the service, he told me that he was an entomologist with an expert interest in alpine butterflies. He worked with a Swiss expert, surveying or you could say auditing a immense variety of habitats and their species across Switzerland. It was amazing, he at this time when rare species are disappearing throughout the world, that there are remote places in alpine meadows where site specific species survive, so long as habitats remain undisturbed by anything foreign to their local ecosystem.
For this reason, he declined to offer his services as a tour guide to butterfly watchers, preferring to keep these locations secret, as camera toting enthusiasts were capable of losing awareness of their environment altogether, end up trampling the habitat the creatures rely on to survive. This reminded me of the news cameraman in Latin America, who filmed himself being murdered by a soldier at a public demonstration. Also of wedding guests toting video-cams attempting to interpose themselves between priest and couple during the solemn vows. It's so easy behind a lens to lose awareness of the impact of your presence on your surroundings. The acquisition of the image becomes everything and this is, in a way, akin to idolatry - note to self, beware!
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