Let Your Holy Angels Have Watch Over Us

As usual, when we’re stay­ing with friendly peo­ple, it’s hard to leave. We did even­tu­ally get out of Tamins on Thurs­day, into another beau­ti­ful alpine morn­ing. A quick climb brought us to Bonaduz, the last place we were assured of find­ing a gro­cery store for some time, so we stocked up on Vit­a­min CH (choco­late) and other calorific snack foods to see us through the pass. The rest of the morn­ing passed unevent­fully, just mak­ing our way down the Rhine canal path (again) until we finally said good­bye to it for­ever and headed into the mountains.

Unfor­tu­nately, that’s when the com­edy of errors began. The orig­i­nal plan had been to fol­low Wan­der­weg #33, Via Albula, over to Tiefen­cas­tel; Andrew had found it on some Swiss hik­ing web­site (hik­ing infor­ma­tion in Switzer­land being fairly hard to come by, to tell you the truth) and it was sup­posed to go from Thu­sis to Sils and then along an old rail line toward Tiefen­cas­tel. Georg our host pro­posed we take the Alte Schin path instead, a medieval trade route still in use today by hikers—and very likely the path that Luther fol­lowed on his way from Chur to the pass.

We thought this was a splen­did idea, but when after 15 km we still hadn’t reached it, and know­ing that it was a long way yet to Tiefen­cas­tel and the Alte Schin appeared to be both longer and taller than the orig­i­nal way, it seemed the bet­ter part of wis­dom to revert to the orig­i­nal plan. Actu­ally, it was the “worser” part of wis­dom to do so. We bypassed the road to Thu­sis to go directly on to Sils, since it seemed shorter, but once in Sils we couldn’t find #33 any­where. We kept fol­low­ing the road into town and far­ther uphill, lured on by signs for the “Sied­lung Albula,” which, we rea­soned, must be con­nected to the Via Albula. But still no hik­ing signs any­where. Finally Andrew spot­ted a sign for the “old train sta­tion.” We sur­mised that this must con­nect us to #33 along the old rail line. Sure enough, up at the old train stop we found the signs for #33.

At this point we thought we were on the right track. We weren’t. The signs point­ing in either direc­tion said noth­ing about Tiefen­cas­tel at all. One pointed to Sied­lung Albula and seemed to go in the gen­eral direc­tion of the road to Tiefen­cas­tel, while the other seemed to go in the wrong direc­tion alto­gether, so off we went toward Sied­lung Albula. But then we went down again, across the road, around a church… and right back in the direc­tion we’d come from in the first place. This did not look good. We saw a cou­ple hik­ing along so we hailed them and asked for help. They didn’t know any­thing about #33 but fig­ured if we wanted to get away from Thu­sis and toward Tiefen­cas­tel we’d bet­ter retrace our steps and go the other way. So, retrace we did. We came back to the old train sta­tion and pre­pared to plunge into the woods and up the hill.

But just then—undoubtedly nudged by the angels who had been sent to answer my fer­vent prayers of the past half hour or so for help or a mir­a­cle or both—we walked by a woman stuff­ing some hik­ing poles into her car, and I fig­ured since she was a hiker she could prob­a­bly ver­ify for us that we were on the right track.

Well, as you might have guessed, we weren’t. We were about to go not only entirely out of the way, and steeply uphill, but along an unfin­ished and rarely used path! She assured us that she knew the whole area well, that #33 wasn’t done, and that if we wanted to go to Tiefen­cas­tel the best way was to take… yes, the Alte Schin. But that was a long way back. We spent some min­utes review­ing all the options with her, mak­ing sure we really under­stood her Swiss-accented Ger­man, our hearts sink­ing at how we’d wasted 2 hours try­ing to be more effi­cient and how com­pletely false our infor­ma­tion was and how close we’d come to a wilder­ness dis­as­ter… Then her hus­band came out of the woods (car­ry­ing a bas­ket­ful of mush­rooms that look like Pfif­fer­linge but with black caps) and ver­i­fied what she’d said. We must have looked pretty for­lorn because they offered to drive us right to our pen­sion in Tiefencastel.

Gen­tle reader, it was a strug­gle. I had really wanted to con­nect Erfurt and Rome, every step of the way (except for around Lake Como, since even 16th-century pil­grims took the boat), with my own feet. But our infor­ma­tion was wrong, it was late in the day, even the well-known Alte Schin is fairly remote and high up. In the end, when God sends you the answer to your prayer, you take it. So we did. That meant skip­ping over close to 20 km and 1250 m, which I don’t think we’d have made even if they’d dri­ven us to where it started, cer­tainly not before dark. I hope the mirac­u­lous nature of our last-minute res­cue com­pen­sates for the lack of foot­steps. I kept think­ing of Luther’s evening prayer: “Let your holy angels have watch over us…”

Gau­den­zio and Trudi dropped us off (amidst our excesses of grat­i­tude and bless­ings) at a pen­sion run by a pious Catholic lady who’d agreed to take us in when Georg the Reformed pas­tor asked the local priest to help us with accom­mo­da­tions, even though it was the hotel’s day off. She fed us her good home­made food, too, since noth­ing else is open nearby. We were glad for the extra rest, since Fri­day was to be even more uphill and a good distance.

Luther had to deal with wolves and ban­dits, but he didn’t have to deal with Mack trucks, many-mile-long tun­nels, or mul­ti­ple roads to choose from. One thing has become very clear: roads are for vehi­cles and vehi­cles only. Trails are for peo­ple with a lot of time on their hands, not peo­ple try­ing to get from one place to another. There are few options for pedes­tri­ans who are using their feet as trans­porta­tion, not recre­ation. I can’t even count the num­ber of times we’ve seen the side­walk end (as in the name of the Shel Sil­ver­stein book) when we get to the out­skirts of a town. Our options up to Sep­ti­mer Pass and beyond are not entirely clear either. We’ll take as many foot­steps as we can… but the goal is to arrive in Rome in one piece!

gwilson says:
September 24, 2010 at 10:10 pm
So sorry to hear about your not so funny com­edy of errors. Thank­ful for answered prayers and angels!
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Allison says:
September 24, 2010 at 10:21 pm
In the spirit of the jour­ney, it sounds like a won­der­ful reminder that we earthly pil­grims always get from point A to point B by the grace of God. There’s no need to “com­pen­sate” for the lack of foot­steps any more than we can “com­pen­sate” for God’s other gra­cious gifts. Thanks be to God for those who had strength (and wheels) to lend you when you needed them. I do hope, though, that the next steps of the jour­ney go a lit­tle more smoothly.
Bless­ings,
Allison
Reply
Steve Godsall-Myers says:
September 25, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Didn’t Luther say “drive boldly and so that grace may abound.”? You are going up the moun­tain pass, God was com­ing down with grace — you just grabbed it! Keep on, keep­ing on! Steve G-M
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