Life in the High Alps
In his book, Alps and Sanctuaries (1881), the English author Samuel Butler describes life in one of his favorite places, the village of Fusio, high up in the Val Lavizzara in Ticino.  A beautiful pastoral scene in summer...a harsh environment for much of the rest of the year.



"I have nothing to retract from what I have said in praise of Fusio.  It is the most old-world subalpine village that I know.  It was probably burnt down some time in the Middle Ages and perhaps the scare caused led to its being rebuilt not in wood but in stone.  The houses are much built into one another as at S. Remo;  the roofs are all of them made of large stones;  there are a good many wooden balconies, but it is probably because it has been chiefly built of stone that we now see it much as it must have looked two or even three centuries ago.  The back of the village is perhaps more medieval in appearance than the front.  Its quaint picturesqueness, the beauty of its flowers, the brilliancy of its meadows prevent me from allowing any great length of time pass without a visit to Fusio.

At Fusio, in spite of all its flowers, there are no bees;  the summer is too short and they would have to be fed too long.  We see a place like Fusio in summer, but what must it be after, say, the middle of October?  How chill and damp, with reeking clouds that search into every corner.  What, again, must it be a little later, when snow has fallen that lies till the middle of May?

The men go about all day in great boots, working in the snow at whatever they can find to do;  they come in at night tired and with their legs and feet half frozen.  The main room of the house may have a stufa in it, but how about the bedrooms?  With single windows and the themometer outside down to zero, if the room is warm enough to thaw and keep things damp it is as much as can be expected.

We asked Guglielmoni (the guide) how he warmed his house in winter and what he did about his bedroom.  He said he put his wife and children into the warm room and slept himself in one that on inquiry proved to have only single windows and no stove.  It then turned out that he had been at death's door this last spring and the one before, and that the doctors at Locarno said he had serious chest mischief.  

But it is not only the hard, long winters, with rough living of every kind, that weigh the people down;  the monotony of the snow, seven months upon the ground, is enough to bow even the strongest spirit.  It is not as if one could get the "Times" every morning at breakfast and theatres, concerts, exhibitions of pictures, and social gatherings of every kind.  Day after day not a blade of grass can be seen, not a little bit of green anywhere, save the mockery of the pine-trees."

Learning French at High Altitude : Recollections of the Summer of 1929 in Nax (an oral history by Rainer Zangerl, May 2000) "It was the summer of 1929, and as a 16 year-old, I was sent to the remote mountain village of Nax in the Valais to learn French. Or rather, to learn how to speak French. My ‘home’ for the summer was the parish house of the local priest in Nax, Father Bonvin, whose name ("good wine") was wonderfully descriptive because his father had been one of the largest wine growers and merchants in the Valais. Father Bonvin shared the parish house with an elderly female relative who did the cooking and cleaning. In those days, Nax was a small village of wooden houses and barns clustered in a little kettle way up on a slope, east of Sion. The farmers made their living from Brown Swiss cattle that grazed in the meadows and from vineyards down in the Rhone Valley. In the summer, the cattle grazed in high mountain pastures, and there was a whole crew of men and boys who spent their summer tending the cattle and making cheese. I had a chance to witness the operation first-hand when one of the boys fell sick, and I volunteered to take his place. Our home and workplace was a primitive cottage, built into the mountainside, with dirt floors and no modern conveniences way up on the alp. This is where we slept, ate, and did much of the work. The crew consisted of a young man who was in charge of the entire operation, five younger fellows who did the milking in the morning and evening and managed the production of butter and cheese. One boys specialized in butter-making. And there were the much younger herder boys. The 35 or 40 cows kept us all very busy! Milking was a chore...a terrible chore. After two days, my knuckles were raw. but in time I developed thick callouses that lasted six or seven years. There produced several kinds of cheese, one very high fat, another medium fat, and then the low-fat zigger. There was a hearth in the cottage, where they hung the kettle and boiled the milk. We fished out the solids and packed them into wooded vats, covered with cheesecloth. These vats were carried into the underground part of the cottage where they were stacked, waiting for the trip down the mountain at the end of summer. After my three weeks up at the alp, I returned to Nax for the grape harvest. Father Bonvin had inherited vineyards further up the Rhone Valley near Sierre. I remember the meticulous records he kept for each vintage: what the growing season had been like, the weather, when the vineyards had required spraying. He had Fendant grapes and Muscat, and then Dole, which were the three primary grape varieties that were grown in those days. They consumed a great deal of wine in Nax! Father Bonvin’s vineyards were about 15 kilometers away from Nax, on the sunny side of the Rhone near Sierre. There were very few roads as we know them in the mountains 70 years ago. Instead, there were mule paths. As the harvest grew near, Father Bonvin recruited a friend to assemble 50 mules to transport the juice. These mules were tied together, forming a long line. Father Bonvin asked me to take this mule train over to the vineyards, assuring me that the mules knew exactly where to go. We started off at 3 a.m. and arrived six hours laters. Much to my relief, the mules did find their way along the trails down to the valley near Sierre. The biggest challenge was getting 50 mules across the main road along the Rhone. Following Father Bonvin’s instructions, I brought the lead mule up to the edge of the road, darted out to the middle of the road to halt traffic, all the while urging the mules to cross. Fortunately, the traffic was light, because this operation took some time! Bonvin had assembled a whole crew of men and women to help with the harvest. After the men picked the grapes, the women stomped them, and then the men filled large leather containers--large enough to hold 100 kilos of juice. Loading these heavy leather pouches onto the mules was a sight to behold. Each mule had a wooden saddle with a hook on either side. Two of these guys, one on either side, then hoisted the leather bags onto the hooks, yelling something in French that I couldn’t understand. The harvest lasted all day, and that evening, I had the ‘honor’ of leading the mule train back across the valley and up to Nax, where the rest of the wine-making process took place. My most vivid memory was a festivity when locally-produced wine and cheese took center stage. I was invited to a local wedding party, which took place in the groom’s parent’s house in Nax. After the church service, the guests congregated in a large room with a large hearth at each end. The groom’s two brothers made raclette all afternoon, while the female relatives served up baked potatoes and Fendant, a white wine. These mountain folks were sturdy characters, and I was amazed at the enormous quantities of raclette they were able to consume. I was fascinated by the raclette-making process. In the back of the hearth, there was a heap of charcoal, red hot. A nice slab of schist (rock) was placed in front of the charcoal. Taking a half round of cheese--mind you, these were three feet in diameter--the raclette maker rested the half-round on the stone with the cut edge facing the hot charcoal. The cheese bubbled up and blistered, but because of its high fat content, was not runny. Once the cheese bubbled, it was scraped off onto a plate...and pretty much covered the plate. What a wonderful taste! Washed down with the Fendant, this was a feast I’ll never forget. And yes, I also learned to speak French that summer!"