Renée E. D’Aoust Daniele and I had eloped four months earlier, in a courthouse in Sandpoint, Idaho. (“Only twenty-eight bucks,” we said, in unison.) I’d finally obtained all the official documents I needed to enter Switzerland as a trailing spouse, not just a visitor, or a girlfriend, but a married person. That day, it rained hard in Ticino. The Mediterranean kind that drops buckets for hours, and cleanses your soul. If you are outside hiking, there is baptism: we were soaked. The stone staircases on the north side of Val Blenio were slippery and covered with leaves that had changed colors and fallen. Chestnut burrs were everywhere, some cracked, some still caging the nut. Three hunting hounds howled from their pens, unused to humans hiking during late fall. We stopped in front of a chapel to pay respects to the Madonna; chicken wire stretched across the fresco to protect it from being blessed by birds, but one tiny lizard had slipped through the wire either to dodge the rain or to commune with Jesus’s mom. Daniele and I stepped carefully, because alpine salamanders were everywhere. These creatures often live within a ten-mile radius, so this was not a reunion, but a whole extended family, rather like the enormous Swiss farm houses that house generations of families and cows on the ground floor. Since that hike, I’ve never seen clumps of salamanders but only alpine loners, treading solo for their ten to twenty year life spans. Even more incredible than the small area through which they saunter is a gestation period that lasts two to three years. Tootsie is uninterested in alpine salamanders. She gives them a wide berth, aware, perhaps, of that strip of toxin on their backs. Greina Plateau We’ve been traveling since four a.m.: first train, second train, and bus. Tootsie eats her breakfast kibble at the trailhead; her choppers make slop-smacking sounds. The Swiss-German hikers cluck collectively, admiring our miniature dachshund as they stride by. One jokes: “Lawinenhund!” We have a steep, rocky start, so Daniele carries Tootsie. Her ears flop in rhythm with Daniele’s gait. I kiss her snout as they pass; her doggy breath emits a fine perfume of chicken and potato kibble. After three kilometers, we rise over a hill and claim the view. Tootsie stands, four paws firmly rooted on the ground. She is so little, and the vista is so grand. This landscape looks as if it were created it by Swiss decree: creeks, lakes, meadows, and mountains. Our trail
Renée E. D’Aoust’s memoir-in-essays is Body of a Dancer (Etruscan Press). She teaches online at Casper College and North Idaho College, and she lives in Switzerland with her partner and their dachshund Tootsie. Please visit www.reneedaoust.com
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