The valleys of Lago Maggiore

Lost up a valley in the southern Swiss Alps, a series of old shepherding villages stand frozen in time. Nomadic Swiss shepherds have carved out homes for themselves over the centuries, from simple Hobbit-homes that were tucked underneath towering boulders to more permanent and cozier dwellings. Typical Swiss wooden hamlets these are not – instead, the homes were built from the very bones of the Earth. Thin slabs of silver stone were assembled by thousands of hands into cottages and fences and chapels until the line between mountain and civilization blurred. The current summer residents are just as hardy as their homes – there is no power grid here, so everyone must generate their own.

The serpentine road led in only two directions: there, and back again. I drove in fits and starts, so overcome by the unfolding valley that I kept having to pull over just to look at it. I quickly learned that tiny unmarked parking areas meant something good was nearby, and we’d hop out to find a stone bridge that leapt across a thundering aqua river or a pair of parallel dry-stone walls that pulled us in towards a village. The road forked and we took it through a string of increasingly tiny and increasingly Italian-named hamlets: Sabbione, Ritorto, Sonlerto. The mountain walls squeezed tighter until there was only space on the valley floor for one river, one hamlet, one road, and us.

Finally we came to rest in the valley’s crown jewel: Foroglio. Overlooked by a thundering waterfall and perched on a hill with a birds-eye view of the valley, Foroglio is probably the best-known village by the outside world. A flagstone footpath led us through the slumbering town, where dozing cats and puffing chimneys were the main signs of life. The path morphed into a hiking trail marked with Europe’s ubiquitous red-and-white blazes. It led up and up and up, past the lip of the screaming waterfall and into the even tinier valley beyond that had birthed it. Spring had just arrived there. Fields of snow thicker than I am tall blanketed the shadier Southern side of the valley, and freshly-unfurled aspen leaves glowed fluorescent whenever the sun danced out from behind the clouds. As we climbed higher, the river’s roar quieted to a babbling whisper. Aspen groves gave way to subalpine meadows, soft dirt paths gave way to scree piles, and when we finally reached the dead end of the valley, an unlikely cluster of ten stone huts sprung apart from the boulders.

At the edge of this silent village a woman lay prone in the grass, face-up in the cooling air. We drew closer and saw that she was a hiker, and that she was fast asleep. More than anything else, this should speak to the peace we found at this end of Earth: a young woman, traveling alone, felt safe enough to nap in a meadow with her backpack unguarded beside her. We rested in silence on a boulder, until the sun began to flirt with the rim of the mountains behind us. Back down we went, past the melting snowfields and basking lizards, across the centuries-old stone bridges, and through the footpaths of Foroglio. In the parking lot, we spied the local “vending machine”: a hollowed-out tree stump with a fridge tucked inside that was stocked with local goat cheese and honey, accompanied by a little honor cash-box and QR code for mobile payments. I am not entirely convinced Switzerland is part of Earth.

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