The worst moment came at Berne. The thought of ‘Yesterday--many years ago’ was never so insistent, never so sorrowful, as on the terrace from which I had so often caught the first glad welcome of the snows. I looked at the Oberland glowing in full sunlight beyond the roofs and the morning mists:
‘Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows; What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what forms are those?
That is the land of lost content; I see it shining plain. The happy highways where I went, And cannot come again.’
To lose and recapture is to make doubly precious. Some of the glamour that haunted the first crossing of the snow-line clung to the first tentative experiments on ski. And so in the summer past two hard-won climbs have dispelled for ever the shadow of suspense that darkened two years. I was working at Montana, but somehow the long greeting of the White trinity that cast their spell from beyond the shadows of the Val’ d’Anniviers made life a burden of vain regrets. I escaped to Zermatt, and the same evening started for the Dent Blanche. As I crossed the threshold of the Schönbuhl Hut I felt like an exile returning home. My nostrils were gladdened by the old familiar evil atmosphere redolent of Swiss tobacco and the inevitable ‘Maggi’ soup. And as I watched the magic web of twilight creeping up the terrible northern wall of the Matterhorn, and drank in the silence of the upper world--a silence that is something more than a mere negation of sound--I felt that the lasting rewards of the craft are not the exotic moments of difficulty or danger, but the humbler commonplaces of every climb, the dawn breaking the shadows on the snow, the vision of far horizons melting into the roof of heaven, the peace and radiant grace of sunset on the hills.
An open wound and lack of training brought on a bad dose of mountain sickness and made the last hour a dour struggle, but a week later I had accommodated myself to changed conditions, and managed to lead over the Combin without undue pain. Only those who have known for months the humiliating dependence of the sick-bed can realise the full gladness of the rope’s responsibility.
There are, of course, moments of sadness when the loss of nerve and strength challenges comparison with the past. The colour of things seems changed. Lost is the old confidence on the poor marksmanship of falling stones. Every well-worn precaution has its meaning. The kindly security of the rope is doubly welcome.