MOUNTAINS, GOATS & BARBECUES

As mentioned in my last post, I guess you could say that the moth is my spirit animal. I relate to anything associated with wind, natural earth tones and wings. 

Also, I love the idea of living two lives, one as a caterpillar and another as a fully grown adult moth. Imagine being able to say Nope, that’s it, I’m going to bed!, wrapping up in a cozy blanket and then waking up as a fully transformed person. 

For one thing, it’s like you were given a new shot at this whole life-thing. For another, these little creatures are like new and improved versions of their old selves! They come with all these neat little gadgets, wings and antennae and all that! I would not mind waking up one morning with a brand new pair of wings! Oh the places I could go… I mean fly!

But, just to be sure, I did take one of those online What’s Your Spirit Animal quizzes (you know, the ones known for their reliability and exactitude, clearly). And I must admit I was shocked. The result was the raven. The raven?? What, cause I’m oh so dark and mysterious?

At least I get to keep the wings, so that's a plus!...

So it turns out the raven is indeed known to be dark and mysterious, but also very intelligent and keeps everyone awestruck by its creative energy. I guess I can see myself fitting in there somewhere, but it just doesn’t sound right. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a raven that struck me as creative!

So the only logical thing to do was to take a different test, naturally. In fact, I took several, because… well, because I got addicted. And I wanted to see if I could get the same animal twice (Which I didn’t. Not once). But for the most part, addicted.

I got the Tiger (primal instincts, raw emotions and intuition), Bear (love, forgiveness, mercy), Red Panda (controversial, secretive, nocturnal fun - wait, nocturnal fun??), Wolverine (Is that even an actual animal?) and Scottish Wild Cat (Now this is just getting ridiculous!)

Well that was… informative? Satisfying? A waste of my time?

To be honest, I will stick to the moth for now since I have no intention to change my nickname to wolverine!

And what better place for a moth to be than high up in the mountains where I can feel the wind blowing through my oh so hairy… antennae?

I took a few days off this summer and spent them in Switzerland with my family. It was a well-deserved and very relaxing holiday.

I’ve been to Switzerland so many times that I have lost count by now and each visit is lovelier than the last. Although I believe I did throw the one or the other fit as a child because in order to get to the top of the mountain you have to… walk up?? Yeah, I wasn’t a fan.

We usually stay somewhere near Zermatt, ideally with the beautiful Matterhorn in sight. This summer must have been quite a busy one though since our usual lodgings were fully booked, so we decided to head slightly further north.

Ironically, it was a very dreary few weeks, but when the sun came out eventually we did manage to snap a few nice shots of the impressive landscape.

We took a very relaxing approach this year and only did what we were really up to. Although my family does have the tendency to want to challenge themselves, “Oh, we won’t go far!” – “Ah, just around one more bend, then we can head back” – “Let me just check around this one corner.” – “I just want to see where it leads…” – “Wait. We’re here? This is the peak? Cool.”

Yes, that did actually happen. And it must have been my favorite tour of the summer.

Although I do also greatly enjoy our open fire barbecues. My brother is a wonderful chef and one of his favorite things to do in the Swiss Alps is to barbecue his own cervelat (a delicious Swiss sausage) high up in the middle of nowhere.

Yum. More please!