Pilgrims who finish the Camino and arrive at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, are mostly of one mind regarding their roughly 500-mile trek: they exude the spirit of life lessons learned – important lessons, necessary lessons, lessons that are even dramatically life-changing. Australian filmmaker Bill Bennett, for instance, triumphed over his painful 500 miles – afflicted throughout with a bum knee, bad hip, and sore shin – and arrived at a profound truth. During the walk, “I was hobbling and trying not to look like I was hobbling,” he recalled in The Way, My Way. “I suspected that I looked like a mongrel dog that had been hit by a car.” And yet, with the ordeal ended, he sat on a hard pew in the heavily gilded cathedral and daydreamed that God, also sitting there “with cartons of half-eaten Chinese take-out by His side and a stale cup of coffee,” together with the Apostle James, “holding a cigarette pensively,” considered him and were pleased. I had done it, Bill understood. I made it. Not only had he done it and made it, but along the way he had had a good, hard look at the man in the mirror and was changed. “I learnt how to be grateful,” he recalled. “Grateful for simple things.”
Simple things are not St. Moritz. Fur-wearing international jet setters, polo ponies, high-end designer boutiques, art galleries, the snooty, exclusive Dracula Club, and similar…well, in this luxury alpine resort God doesn’t do Chinese take-out. What He did do was find my sister and me a comfy hotel in Pontresina, the local area where cross-country skiing reigns, and convince us that we may have been fur-free (fake only, please!) and entirely sans jet or pony, but St. Moritz was exactly our speed. There, with three ski days at Corviglia and Corvatsch – two of the best known of the Engadine Valley’s nine ski areas – the simple joys of snow, sun, fun, and sisterly togetherness in the storied Swiss resort made us so aware of life lessons learned that, honestly, we, too, could have been in Santiago sharing a pew with God and getting His message. We had done it, yes. We had made it. And we were grateful. “My” Camino had detoured out of Spain, but still: landing here in the Alps where “palace” hotels perch majestically on hills, horse-drawn sleigh-rides go over the lake and through the snow, and a chairlift ride may be shared with royalty, I was no less a pilgrim and Candy? Well, Candy was crazy with happiness that our adventure had dropped us into the good life; we had made it into the midst of the Hermès-dressed wintering set and yet, St. Moritz was so us.
“Oh, my God, I do not have to go to work!” My sister awoke after 11 hours between clouds of Swiss featherbed, her face creased and hair a chaos of crazy angles. The luxury of a vacation! The joy was too much. “I want to be one of these people,” she confessed when I served her a cappuccino in bed.
“A lying-around rich person with nothing to do but be beautiful?”
“A person with no job who is free to ski St. Moritz with her sister…just like this.”
Well, yes, who wouldn’t? Though the no-job was not possible likely ever in this life, Candy was channeling a common Camino life lesson learned. “The truth we discover is our truth,” as W. Lee Nichols described it in Talking with Cats. “The joy we discover is our joy.” And in the end, he learned “we are worthy of living an authentic life filled with happiness.” Overslept and hair a mess, we, too, knew the truth and the joy and the happiness others won after walking 500 miles, for all we had to do was sashay around St. Moritz, letting any rich bitch or princess who cared to, envy us our fun.
Like, there we were laughing over tea and a sweet at the legendary Hanselmann Confectionery, overlooking the famous frozen lake. Yes, we could have attended a White Turf horse race, cricket match, or polo exhibition there; we could have strapped into a toboggan and shot down the historic Olympia Bobrun (the world’s oldest); or lied our way into the lobby of Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in order to steep in the same glitz and glamour Audrey Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, and Charlie Chaplin enjoyed as actual hotel guests, guests the smartly uniformed doorman did not turn away, like he did us in our après-ski parkas not made by Prada – the giveaway we weren’t checking in. We could have lunched at the gourmet restaurant Chasellas on the hill, where we might look up from our whole sole with lemon and capers, say, and see Will and Kate disguised in ski suits, savoring the region’s rösti with leeks. If in the mood we could even have done some skijoring – as long as we were there – and had horses pull us behind them through the snowy wild like the Iditarod mushers we weren’t.
But why? Why when for us St. Moritz was all about – so embarrassing to say – the ski bus. It was the simplest of simple pleasures, sitting snug in a bouncy, crowded, cozy sofa on wheels that moved us around the Engadin valley like we were Queen Elizabeth riding royally in the Gold State Coach created in 1762 for coronations.
“Wave back!” I urged Candy when our coach, actually meant to drop skiers at various ski hills, glided past pedestrians along the route and they invariably big-smiled and waved first in a friendly St. Moritz way. “We’re special. Be gracious.” True, our coach may not have been drawn by eight steeds, accompanied by beefeaters, topped by chubby gilded cherubs, upholstered in velvet, and featured magnificent painted panels of Roman gods and goddesses, but still: from the panoramic picture windows we had a warm, padded ringside seat to all our subjects – the St. Moritz sights we would come to love.
The sunny village of Celerina, where we could go sledding or learn curling; picturesque Sils-Maia, another Swiss village where on Lake Sils we could hoist sails on ice boats and take ourselves ice sailing; and of course our home hamlet, the mountaineering town of Pontresina, where we could ride the cableway to the Diavolezza Glacier Lookout and follow the glacier walk until we found some ice climbers to gawk at: it was all marvelous TV, as we glided by, being waved at and waving. “I have simply learned to surrender to the mystery, to the flow,” muses W. Lee of his Camino lessons learned; he certainly speaks for my sister and me, as we surrendered and flowed to wherever our coach was flowing to. Did we care where? Not in the least. This day the legendary St. Moritz sun – the resort’s very symbol is a stylized, shining sun said to represent the town’s “champagne atmosphere” – beamed in on us through our coach windows; on the outskirts of St. Moritz-Bad, the spa district located along the lake, I sensed a swoon incoming and sure enough, Candy was soon softly purring beside me. I let her sleep. Flowing along, I surrendered to the mystery of how St. Moritz managed to feel so Camino-like when everyone knows there is only one and only real Camino.
I mean, Carolyn Gillespie’s big life lesson learned during her grueling 500 miles on foot had to do with healing a heart desperate to shuck 30 years of protections as restrictive as medieval iron chain mail. “The Camino taught me how to receive,” she recounts in Pilgrim. “To receive the joy so abundantly given by the birds and the flowers and the trees and the skies and the light and the people.” When she at last plopped exhausted onto the cathedral pew in Santiago de Compostela, she didn’t see Jesus and his kung pao chicken, but she did indeed get the message: her newly freed heart “had bloomed,” she remembers, “ready to give and to receive.”
The sun, the snow, the sister, the snooze in the middle of an afternoon where there was nothing to do but glide around in beautiful surroundings, smiling and waving: Candy and I bounced along in a heated bus as if on our way to coronation; with the luxury of freedom our cares – what cares? – were forgotten in the magical ride around a realm pretty with palaces, bursting with sport, and exactly the level of fancy we felt we deserved. I jostled my sister awake from her princessly slumber.
“Look!” I waved out the window with my best majestic wrist motion – back of hand and slightly twisting; subtle but unmistakably royal. “I think those people think we’re somebodies!” Outside in the freezing cold a friendly huddle of surely actual someones, going by their coats of mink and hats of fox and boots of bunny, plus the polo-pony logos on their luggage, beamed at us with adoring-fans faces and waved with great enthusiasm. Our coach slammed on the brakes like whoa, steeds and stopped.
“You know? You really need to own it,” said Candy. “We are somebodies.”
After a brief conversation in Italian with the coachman, the head of the huddle returned to his furry group and with a shake of his fox-hatted head likely shared that, no, our coach was not the coach to the train station. We waved arrivederci anyway and the adoring-fans faces smiled back.
“In St. Moritz maybe everyone is a someone.” I was reluctant to let go of all my queenly feelings when the ski bus, at the end of our ski day, dropped us at the door of our hotel in Pontresina. Clearly, there was no need to.
“Ma’am,” said the existing guest who held open the hotel door and slightly bowed. With a small smile I regally nodded my thanks. “Good evening, ma’am,” greeted the people standing in a sea of bags waiting for the maid to make up their room so they could check-in. Serenely I nodded my acknowledgement. “Ma’am, it’s lovely to see you,” discretely murmured the front desk clerk, handing me the room key. Just as discretely I arranged my mouth into a regal Her Majesty smile – radiant but not too; warm but reserved – and murmured back with dignity, Sir, thank you. I bid my sister follow me into the elevator as if she were a lady in waiting, and once the door closed, with one look at each other we cracked up.
“I’m sure feeling the love, aren’t you?” Candy considered it totally apropos that St. Moritz would fawn over us like we were persons of importance. The fantastic skiing, the friendly people, the luxury shops, lovely restaurants, and spectacular palace hotels – right out of an Old World fairytale: all were gifts so generously given that, were we sitting hard on a cathedral pew in Santiago de Compostela after 500 miles of sweat, instead of swanning around a glamorous resort where we were treated like serene highnesses, we would get the life lesson learned all the same.
“Oh, ma’am, yes,” I agreed. “What a joy it is to receive.”
Recent Comments