Our Future Selves

Our two weeks in Ticino had flown by, but it was time to move on to new adventures at our second WWOOF farm. Rather than zipping there as fast as possible, we decided to take the scenic route -- a panoramic train across the Alps followed by a 3-hour steamboat ride across the sparkling Lake of Lucerne. Although we didn’t get the time advantage of going 200 km/hr as we had before, we did get to sit back and take in the changes of the landscape at a pace we could absorb.

After a long 11-hour day of traveling, we finally hopped off the Postbus up in the rural hillsides above Thun. The last big push was to stumble up our hosts’ steep driveway with our massive packs. But what a reward once we got to the top and gazed out at the view! We could see why our hosts love living here. It was a strikingly different landscape from Ticino, but equally lovely -- a region of steep lush pastures, small villages, hillsides of thick evergreen forests, with a high craggy ridge watching over it all. Being back in a more northerly climate gave Colby hope towards escaping some of the heat and humidity of Ticino. We were back in the land of evergreens -- immensely tall and perfectly straight pines and spruces soared into the sky with an elegant gravitas. We also had a classic Swiss soundtrack to listen to: cowbells echoed up from the valley along with the unabashed, Halloweenish baaing of sheep. (Tip: if you want to stay asleep at 5 am, remember to close your bedroom window). Our host Andi pulled out the alphorn he had built and played a little serenade in the falling dusk.

Our hosts, Andi and Christina, are a young outdoors-loving couple in their early 30’s who are former WWOOFers themselves. They met through mutual friends about eight years ago while climbing. Like our first WWOOF farm, this farm isn’t a production farm but is more of a hobby farm for their own use.

Both of our hosts work almost full time -- Christina as a nurse, and Andi doing something in the realm of computer programming, business analysis, and architecture. It was fun to see how their different personalities complemented and enriched each other. Christina is an organized, decisive, friendly, practical, and strong woman. Andi, with his brilliant mind and endless inventiveness, dives into tons of different projects usually donning shredded shoes and a ripped T-shirt. Although their thoughts and approaches are sometimes different, it felt like our hosts had developed an equal partnership nourished with deep affection for each other.

It was cool to see how our hosts find time around their work schedules to engage in their passion for homesteading. They tend a big garden, renovate the house, keep bees, raise animals (rabbits, chickens, and ducks), and preserve the bounty by processing, freezing, and fermenting. Christina enjoys baking all sorts of elaborate types of bread and Andi is an experienced hunter. One dinner we had sausages that Andi’s butcher brother had made -- a mixture of venison, wild pig, and mountain goat meat. Seeing all these activities sparked our dreams about all the things we would like to do in our own homestead.

Besides working, Andi is doing more university studies in addition to the two masters’ degrees he already has. We heard a lot about his distaste for the mainstream educational system. His experience has been that it stifles curiosity, creativity, and the ability to think abstractly. In contrast, he enjoys aspects of the Montessori and Waldorf philosophies, appreciating learning that is more self-inspired and holistic. We couldn’t help but laugh out loud when Andi described the way he finally showed up to a university semester in November, his skin a dark tan from having spent the first two months of the semester scuba diving in Egypt… and then he proceeded to do just fine. On a more serious note, we learned how Switzerland and many other European countries are having similar problems as the United States with undereducated and underinformed populations feeding into hateful right-wing movements.

 Another memorable experience was meeting Christina’s father Felix, who comes over for dinner every week or two. He is a worldly high-up in the Red Cross who has lived and worked all over the globe. He was quite a character, with his small stature only concentrating his energy as he released a neverending stream of animated speech. For all the good humanitarian work that her father does, Christina expressed that she wouldn’t want his lifestyle for herself. She described how her father is always bouncing around to an endless series of important meetings and important events, always doing new projects in new places, always throwing parties. She feels that something is missing in this lifestyle -- that it’s hard to delve into a deep understanding of things when you are always skimming around on the surface. In contrast, Christina enjoys putting down roots in one place and connecting with it on a deeper level. She finds that living at a slower and more rooted pace gives her more continuity and fulfillment in life. We could relate to this as being our style as well, once we finally settle down out of the flurries of traveling.

We can’t introduce our hosts without also mentioning their 100-pound hunting dog Chango, who is an equal part of the family. He can often be spotted hanging his head over the edge of the deck, intently watching the flock of ducks below like a television, all but licking his lips. He is affectionate, expressive, devoted, and really, really big -- don’t get in his way when he’s excited! Chango is like a child to Andi and Christina. Our hosts have decided not to have their own children to avoid increasing the human footprint on the planet, but they have looked into adopting. They lamented how difficult the system makes it to adopt and how most societies are set up in a way that facilitates overpopulation.

Homesteading

We began our first morning by jumping into the work of the farm. Throughout our stay, we participated in lots of activities that were sometimes challenging, sometimes fun, and sometimes exhausting, but always a learning experience.

Julia had a hard time with all the tasks she wasn’t familiar with and all the instructions she didn’t entirely understand. On the first day, the materials for setting up a drip irrigation system looked like a big frustrating pile of random tubes and plastic pieces that Andi’s quick instructions did nothing to illuminate. (Fortunately, with Colby’s explanations it eventually made sense). Later in the day, we worked on packing a seed mix into a washed-out slope in the hopes of stopping erosion. It was intimidating to steer a stinky, loud 400-horsepower machine up the hill with the stinky, loud earth packer loaded on top. (Colby got to drive the intensely vibrating earth packer down the hill to compact the ground). Another new experience was burning out their bee boxes and frames with a gas torch in order to kill viruses and bacteria, nervously hoping to do a thorough enough job. Although not all the experiences were pleasant, they were empowering. They also made the more enjoyable experiences all the nicer: helping to make rhubarb wine, weeding and planting the terraced garden, cooking (including another rhubarb apple crisp of course), doing the animal chores, cleaning out the barn, prying nails out of boards, and sculpting a concrete lip for the garage drainage grates. Another project that was quite engaging and satisfying was duct taping foam insulation around the pipes of their solar hot water system. Not all of the activities were glamorous, but they gave a full-spectrum experience of all the work that goes into maintaining a home and a farm.

Colby had the harder job of doing most of the big muscle work -- loading massive wooden boards and logs into the barn’s rafters, trying not to lose limbs while helping Andi chainsaw old boards for firewood, and lots of pickaxing. Which brings us to the big project of our time at this farm, helping our hosts redo the whole drainage system around their driveway and garage. The reason behind this was that the water coming down the hill had started to drain under their house. Colby spent many hours helping Andi at the construction site -- driving the dumper down the hill to unload the extra dirt, mixing and wheelbarrowing loads of concrete, arranging and rearranging the orange drainage pipes, and all the pickaxing. Colby would spend a half hour leveling a ditch just so, and then oops -- that won’t work after all, we have to do it differently. Then the excavator would come in and tear it all up again. It was a DIY project that sometimes made you want to cry and sometimes laugh. But we did our best to help, and can only hope that it holds up over time.

Outdoor Adventures  

In between our full work days, we also had a number of days off to venture on long outdoor outings. Our hosts love hiking and were a treasure trove of route recommendations - they seemed to know every valley, town, and path in their region of Switzerland.

Since each of our three big hikes involved about one vertical kilometer of elevation gain, we became quite familiar with the feelings of burning legs and breathless lungs. Despite the discomfort, hiking brought us into a deeper and more personal connection with the landscape.

On our first hike in the Valais region, we climbed up through the aromatic pine scrubland into the fog-cloaked mountains. Soon the clouds began to part just enough to reveal ever-shifting glimpses of the landscape. What we couldn’t see was just as magical as what we could. The snowy mountains, the rocky cliffs, and the deep valley roaring with the wild freedom of snowmelt all peeked in and out of the mist. As the day wore on and the wind slowly broke up the clouds, it sent them swirling and sailing around in the pure blue sky. It was exhilarating to feel like we had been swept into the living, breathing lungs of the mountains. We weren’t just observers but active participants in the ongoing transformations of cloud, sky, rock, and trees. Something about this carried a lot of emotion, reminding us that the richness of life is in its constant motion and change.

On our way down the mountain, we wound our way past a long series of serious rockfall guards. As we entered the town of Raron far below, we noticed many mentions of Rilke on the signs. Could it be the poet, Ranier Maria von Rilke? Julia was excited to discover that, by completely random coincidence, we had stumbled upon the town where one of her favorite poets is buried.

Our second hike took us up and over a high pass in the mountains. It felt like classic Switzerland. We passed by beautiful old chalets with intricate woodwork designs and flowers in the windowsills. We ascended through incredibly steep pastures ringing with musical cowbells and through fields of wildflowers (distinctly nicer in the areas the cows weren’t grazing). We gaped at the cliffs of rock that looked like they had been kneaded by an enormous hand, and swept our eyes down their vast skirts of gravel slides.

On our third hike, we traversed the top of the rocky ridge line near our hosts’ farm. In the rocks, we spotted countless shell fossils. Way up at 2000 meters, we were walking on an ancient seabed. The slanted stairsteps of rocky terraces reminded us how the land has been pushed and shoved and tilted over millions of years.

On Saturday, our hosts took us rafting on the Aare river, about 30 kilometers from Thun to Bern. As we pushed off, we were swept into the swift current of pure mountain meltwater. It was a great time to kick back and relax as we glided past the landscape and let the flow of the river pull us along. There was something special about spending an unhurried time together, allowing thoughtful conversations to bubble up and swirl and ripen in the silence around them.

Discussions and Observations

As we sat in the shade of our rafting lunch break and gazed out at the rapid current of the river, Christina talked about the changes she has noticed in Swiss society. In general people seem to be eating worse, moving their bodies less, and getting more sucked into consumerism. It seems that people feel unfulfilled and discontent with their lives. She mused that some of this might come from people being so specialized in their careers that they don’t know the skills to provide for their own needs. The temporary excitement and happiness of consuming things is a distraction from a deeper emptiness in society.

Another topic that came up frequently in our conversations was the way humans are really still “cavemen” just beneath our decorative surface. Our tendencies toward selfishness and short-sightedness are constantly seeping into our institutions and technologies, in a way that has consequences reaching far beyond our own lives. Our hosts were dismayed to hear about Trump pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord. Of course it’s easy to blame others for acting like cavemen, but looking inward we all have the same tendencies. How can we individually and collectively live up to our highest potential?

In addition to conversations such as these with our hosts, we also noticed lots of things about the Swiss landscape as we hiked. As we ascended over the mountain pass in our second hike, we were again astonished by the extent of human activity on the landscape. We felt like we had hiked up so high, but there were always more pastures and more chalets. The human presence is by no means unpleasant, and is even beautiful much of the time, but it’s just so always-present. As we reached the top of the saddle, it looked like we had finally entered an entirely wild landscape, until we spotted a pasture fence running high along the top of the cliff. Of course, in the United States there is also human impact almost everywhere. But at home, we are accustomed to a more untamed feel in the large swaths of mountains and forests. On the flip side, in the United States the places that are dominated by human activity are generally much uglier than those in Switzerland.

Throughout our time in Switzerland, it has been interesting to see how the human and natural landscapes have merged over the centuries. Our second hike was in a region designated as a nature preserve, which our hosts informed us also includes being used as a cow pasture. Cows are nature, right? We learned that without being grazed, many of the pastures would turn back to forest. Grazing maintains the landscape of open meadows, which supports many species of birds and flowers adapted to that ecosystem. Because of this, some argue that leaving the landscape to turn back into forest would actually decrease biodiversity.

On the other hand, we also learned about the problem of overgrazing. Our hosts mentioned that there are lots of erosion and land degradation problems in the Alps. Swiss farmers receive a significant portion of their income as subsidies from the government, to allow them to compete with more fertile agricultural regions. Fortunately, we learned that the Swiss government recently switched to subsidizing farms by land area rather than by number of animals. This is to avoid tempting people to put more animals on the land than it can handle. Our hosts, who are excited about trying new techniques, will next year be getting a herd of small native caribou-type creatures for their land, which are more locally adapted to graze sustainably.

In addition to managing the landscape through grazing, we have also noticed that throughout Switzerland almost all of the rivers and streams are carefully channeled. Living in such a tough environment with limited space, we could understand why they don’t leave much to chance. Still, it has been interesting to see how highly managed every aspect of nature is.

We learned from our hosts about all the government rules surrounding land use. If you own land, you are required to manage it in specific ways such as grazing. Our hosts mentioned how these regulations are kind of like a big national landscaping project. All of the rules have helped maintain the charming beauty of the landscape, but this comes at the cost of having the freedom to do what you want. This issue has come up time and again during our stay in Switzerland. What is the balance between personal freedom and maintaining a high community quality of life?

Imagining our Future

Hearing our hosts’ take on society and human nature made us reflect on how we ourselves would like to live. It was inspiring to see how our hosts try to live in a more wholesome way. They grow and hunt some of their own food, try to consume less, know how to build and fix things themselves, cook much of their food from scratch, aim to live lightly on the earth, and are innovating with new approaches.

One of the most valuable parts of our time in Thun was being able to experience the life of a couple just a few years down the road from us. Eight years ago, our hosts were in a similar stage of life as we are -- WWOOFing, traveling, adventuring outdoors, and trying to find their place in the world. Looking at the way our hosts have settled and set up their lives made us think about where we will be in eight years. A big part of our trip so far has been discerning what we want in a home, lifestyle, community, and landscape. We really liked our hosts' self-sufficient lifestyle in a beautiful rural area, and could imagine something like this for ourselves. After seeing how much effort goes into the upkeep of a big 300-year-old house, though, it reaffirmed our inclination towards living in a smaller and simpler space. Also, at both of our WWOOF farms it was interesting to learn about the community feel of the area. Neighbors are friendly with each other, but in both places our hosts’ social networks were much more strongly tied to other circles of friends scattered around the region and the country. This made us appreciate what a unique situation Colby’s hometown of Finland, Minnesota is in, where neighbors and friends are one and the same.

As our two weeks wound to a close, we gathered together out on the deck with our hosts for our final dinner -- the delectable communal meal of fondue with a local white wine. By the end of our stay at the farm, the cumulative exhaustion of traveling for more than five weeks was starting to catch up with us. Looking back, in the excitement of cramming in as much as possible we realized we hadn’t taken much time to rest. Small challenges were becoming more and more emotionally trying. Nevertheless, we had experienced a richly valuable time at our second WWOOF farm. We had enjoyed the bliss of our hosts’ sauna and their oudoor wood-fired hot tub, and Colby got his fill of snuggling with their cats. We had taken part in the daily life of our hosts, contemplating both the parts we loved and the aspects that didn’t fit our style. Most importantly, our wonderful hosts had shared lots of laughter, affection, insights, and wisdom about life with us.

 

In the morning we loaded up our packs and stumbled back down the steep driveway. Before catching the bus, we headed down to the rocky river gorge at the bottom of the valley, where we found a traditional timber frame bridge built just for the footpath. Surrounded with the loud cascade of rushing water, we reflected on our time in Thun. Every aspect of our stay had given us a new strand to braid into the rich and subtle tapestry of experience -- both the challenges and the joys had helped us look more deeply inward. Now, it was the perfect time to head home to Winterthur and convene with Colby’s family reunion for a few days of rest and relaxation.