Mutten (3rd March 2011)

From our kitchen window in Zorten, there is a fine view of the Muttnerhorn, a smooth white peak, the face turned to us always thick with snow, rising a modest distance above a tree-covered slope riven by a handful of snowy gulleys. On the right hand side it rolls gently out to a wide pass, on whose snowy flank at some point last winter I had eventually noticed a ski lift, running beside a collection of small wooden buildings above the tree-line. The mountain has always been our barometer: open the curtains first thing in the morning, see whether it is visible at all, what type of clouds drift above it, is the sky blue or veiled with high cloud? And also the focus of a plan to hike up one day and ski down, idle planning of routes, even the purchase of the local ski touring map from Thusis and finding there is actually a formally recognised route down there. We never went up there last year and this season there is hardly enough snow to justify the attempt. So the mountain sits there, a benign presence watching over our little hamlet from a polite distance.

Today I had no work and decided to start the day with a trip to the local open prison to buy wood for the stove, idled back through Thusis, went shopping, idled back and on a whim turned right instead of left and headed up towards Mutten, on the flank of the hill. The first village, Solis, was charming, Mutten larger and even more so, unafflicted by progress, old wooden houses jostling for space on the folds of the hillside, blackened by winters of snow and hot summers, cow barns still cow barns and the tarmac road the only outward concession to modernity. I headed up towards the ski slope, but after the road swung precipitously right and changed its surface to slippery mud abandoned my vehicle and continued on foot. A logging tractor was following me so I flagged it down and asked about the ski lift. Unexpectedly the occupants told me it was working; I hadn't believed that a lift could be working up the end of a road which seemed impassable to all but four-wheel drives, so there and then I decided to go back down, and come back with my skis. Having first confirmed that the lift really was open with a pleasant woman walking a child and two Sennenhunds which tried to lick my arm off and climb in the car window.

An hour or so later the car was again parked by the church and I was again walking up the road (which I had been assured would only take half an hour from that point onwards), this time with skis on my shoulder. Not many vehicles travel this way. Within 30 metres, however, I had managed to flag down the only passing car and got a lift, from a charming woman who was going up to spend a couple of days up there with her kids. Given the amount of traffic, this seemed remarkably lucky, perhaps less so when she started telling me her snow tyres were worn out. To my great relief she then stopped to put chains on – which miraculously took less than a couple of minutes and from then on I relaxed and enjoyed the ride, including the wait for the woodcutters to move a large trunk from the road, an suddenly we were there, among the buildings you can see from our window, which turned out to be a beautifully weathered set of cow and goat sheds mixed with old houses and wooden holiday cottages, all nicely spaced, new cottages and old barns indistinguishable the one from the other.

There too was my mountain, rising out of the trees to present an unfamiliar face and showing a long winding flank which I had only guessed at from the map, all equally smooth, rounded and pristine.

I was deposited at the top of the lift, skied down, rode back up again and found the kasse to have been at the top all along, so produced my Graubünden pass and ascertained that I was indeed, to the liftie's knowledge, the only English person ever to have set foot in Obermutten. I asked him about the trail up the Muttnerhorn and he told me the first part was a road, after that just mountain but he hadn't been higher than the road part himself, though a lot of people do like to go up there.

Then I started doing laps round the ski slope. Somehow it should have been boring. Somehow it was not. There were a half dozen other skiers there, including a group of wobbly kids who their teacher was forcing to pop over a small kicker off-piste. All of them leaned reluctantly backwards with their skis in a skittery snowplough. All of them sat down on landing, slid a bit, scrambled to their feet and wobbled onwards. Later they were launching themselves with much greater enthusiasm down a slalom course made out of ski poles.

The piste itself was rolling with ill defined margins, large rocks and trees across its width (I can see them from here, looking up, in the fading light), and bare sections of earth where the piste basher had removed the remaining inches of snow. But the top of the slope was wide and empty, allowing for carved turns over its whole extent, and to the right a patch of largely untracked snow steep enough to throw a few turns in. I tracked it entirely. Then turned my attentions to the piste again. I still couldn't work out why I wasn't getting bored. Something in the rolling form of the slope? The larch trees where you have to go left to keep off the earth patch, then swing right to get in just a few more turns before choosing between a bouncy narrow track running left or the wider sweep down to the bottom of the lift? The fact that the few people there were friendly individuals rather than an aggressive moving slalom course with an apparent death-wish? That no-one had any attitude?

Eventually, though the afternoon was heading on so I did one last perfect run down the little piste, came back up the lift and pottered over to the impeccable Gasthaus Post where I was served coffee and Linzertorte by the owner, a friendly gent with a fine set of whiskers. Then put my skis on again, cruised down the run, sat in the sunshine on somebody's bench at the bottom to take my boots off and sort out my skis, before strolling back down the road. This was punctuated by the woodcutters, with perfect timing, felling a huge fir just as I arrived to watch.

I had many views across the valley through breaks in the forest. The sun was starting to go down, the shadow of the mountain creeping out with visible speed, and greying the warm russet brown of the winter grass on the slopes opposite: Lain, Muldain and Zorten, the latter with its impressively prominent church where the post bus turns and I wait on frosty mornings; along the valley side via Nivagl,only two houses really, where the track to Alvaschein rises from the vehicle road to Thusis; Alvaschein itself where I walk occasionally on the pretext of buying cheese from a rusty old fridge with an honesty box; up the hill slightly to the edge of Lantsch where a German friend lived last year. On my side of the valley I could look down on Solis, the first of the villages on the meadow above the cliff, its off-white church still warmed by the sun just beyond the relentlessly advancing edge of the shadow.

There is something about the sense of space and three dimensionality of this valley which really makes you feel that you are alive, truly appreciate the fact, feel rooted in external space and feel at one with everything. I've had this feeling before, looking out, in the opposite direction from the post bus on the way to work, and it's hard to describe, but walking down the road back to Mutten allowed me to savour the sensation longer, even stopping for minutes to gaze down over the wide sweep of the valley, far away objects, unusually clear and purposeful, each with its own identity: the patch of dark ground where the snow was gone under a little tree, a distant pile of snowy logs, Solis church on the edge of the ravine, the two houses of Nivagl. There is some kind of spacial perfection about this place which gives you a feeling of being of the world and at one with it, an understanding of scale and of space and of the position of every object within it. Life is of the present moment only when you look out over this valley; past and future have no purchase.

I was almost disappointed to see the chapel with my car next to it; had someone offered me a lift I would have declined, to look just a little longer. But there I was, back at the car, saying hello to a woman with a friendly labrador, driving off and pausing only briefly on the way back, to have a closer look at the church I had seen from above, 17th or 18th century, I would say, with a large portico painted to look like marble by someone who had not looked at real marble, but which effect somehow gave it a rustic charm anyway. The dome of the bell tower was covered in ancient wooden shingles, as was a lovely old building – some sort of vicarage perhaps, but my knowledge of Swiss churches is greatly deficient – abutting on to it, with a vegetable garden and flower pots waiting for spring and a sign offering honey for sale.

Not wanting to disturb anyone, I headed back to the car, then back here, sat down at the kitchen table, got out my computer and looked out of the window at the view which will never be the same again because now I have actually been inside it and it is no longer a stranger to me. It is almost dark now but I will leave the curtains open until it fades completely from sight.