Rooted Wanderings

The First Day After our fast-paced spin through Iceland, our first week in Switzerland gave us a chance to slow down into the rhythms of daily life. Colby’s relatives Marianne and Ewald welcomed us with warm hugs at the Zurich Airport. We schlepped our backpacks into their little red car and rode about 30 minutes to their house in Winterthur, where we would spend the next week. Winterthur is known as “the garden city,” and it couldn’t have been a more striking contrast from the barrenness of Iceland. As we drove through the streets, we couldn’t stop marveling at the lushness of this new place  -- the fullness of the soaring trees, the colorful bursts of May flowers. Once we settled in at the house, we were immediately introduced to the diverse wonders of Swiss cheese. For an afternoon snack together, we were presented with a beautiful spread of cheeses from various regions of Switzerland: Emmental, Appenzell, Tilsiter, and Tête de Moin (meaning “monk’s head” in French, as

Day 1 As our plane descended out of the thick, low clouds into Keflavik Airport, we were greeted with a landscape of rock and lichens, with a raging gale force wind blowing sheets of water across the pavement. We had known it was going to be windy in Iceland, but even so it was an enticing welcome into the country’s dramatic wildness. After getting the keys to a brand new Kia Picanto, we set off toward Reykjavik. Colby did an excellent job keeping the car on the road with the winds blowing so hard the van in front of us was tilted almost off its two right wheels. On the first day, we visited two of the most popular attractions in Iceland. First was Thingvellir National Park, where we walked the rift between the North American and Eurasian plates. It was earth-splittingly neat although not earth-shattering. Then Strokkur Geyser, which spews hot water high into the sky every eight minutes, except when it does it twice within one minute giving us no warning on when to have th

The dream of this trip to Switzerland began many years ago. Colby, with his Swiss heritage, had Switzerland on the agenda and was only waiting for the right conditions. They arrived when Julia came into the picture and the collective envisioning began. We both wanted this trip to be a journey of self exploration and new experiences. The trip’s extended length spoke to our desire to connect with new places and communities on a deeper level. As we journey, we are hoping to find ourselves and our place in the world. Asking the question: How do we be our best selves and contribute towards a better world? But for all the conversations that we have had about the purpose of the trip, we still don’t have a single specific goal. Instead, we are opening ourselves to meander down whatever winding channels appear in front of us, and see what they have to offer. We joined the Swiss WWOOF organization in December 2015 and started to plan. A ways into the research we realized that t