When I was twenty I hiked on the Egg. Together with Henry, the warmest and most vital person, I've ever met.
It was May, but already warm in summer. One of the most beautiful fragrances, that exist, the smell of hay was in the air . Up on the Egg we passed an old man, who turned the cut grass with the pitchfork.
“May we help??” we asked. Because the man was at least eighty and dressed all in black. He also wore a black hat.
He gave us two forks and showed us, How to do it. Wir emdeten eine grosse Wiese bis gegen Sechs.
Then the old man loaded us into his old cart and we bumped down a narrow dirt road, encircled between the forest. I bet, it was the old man's private road, that nobody knew.
And right; as it is between the hills and crashes of the Emmental: at the end of the hole, that we slipped up, a meadow appeared again, another Egg.
A large farmhouse was enthroned on this egg, isolated from the world. The farmer gave us cider and cheese. It was so big and white, like the huge thighs of the old farmer's wife, who appeared half-naked, Barrels-same. The kitchen was full of flies. You couldn't be squeamish.
“These two boys helped me with the hay.” Said the old man. The woman cast a doughy, suspicious look at Henry and me.
I think, Henry was wearing his parrot shirt, his golden hair fell on his shoulders a la Jon Bon Jovi. I was black, with marked collarbone under blue-black hair, spider-fine. Quite possible, Henry wore his Cuban spiked shoes, and me small velvet pumps from Piedmont.
“Was!? These two creatures!?”, the peasant woman's look seemed to say.
But the old man was satisfied, and poured us one more cider. He cut off scraps of cheese and handed us the bread, that we eagerly bit into.
In the end he drove us back to the Egg, there, where he had picked us up.
How we got home, I do not know anymore. But we have often spoken of the two stranded old people, there in her trench.
Where they, the water addicted woman, sure died soon. And the old man didn't want to leave, not even when urged.
Extinct species in the mid-1990s.
And you? Have thought of us again?
An egg is a hill or a mountain ridge, from where you have a great panoramic view, from one egg to the other. I do not know, whether it is a term, which is reserved for the typical hills of the Emmental. There is almost always a tree at the top of an egg, an ash or a maple, for example. Seldom a fir tree on its own.
1.11.2020