THE BEST FAMILY VACATION OF ALL
Over the years I’ve strived to create connected family time. I’ve learned something wonderful happens for us when we get outside together. It’s not perfect, and this year our 14 year old daughter announced in the Swiss Alps, that “hiking is boring, and so is being with you guys.” I had to laugh even though I was irritated — she wants her friends. I remember. Even still, time spent on hiking trails has helped us dig deep individually, be together in a comfortable and fulfilling way, and connect with something bigger and important.
I grew up in redwoods of California and spent summers outside. We packed up our funky old car every summer, and off we went for camping by rushing rivers, hiking amidst snow covered peaks, lounging in mountain hot springs, paddling across lakes in our little raft, and sleeping under the stars. Time was slow then, and wonderful. Nature was, as my mom put it, “our family’s temple,” and my happiest memories of childhood are all outdoors. I’ve asked many people about their happiest memories from childhood and it turns out, I’m not alone — being outside fills many a memory bank.
When we moved to Washington D.C ten years ago, I knew we needed a mountain place to create the kind of family time I yearned for us to know. A place where we weren’t isolated from each other on our phones, weren’t being “entertained,” were just being together. We explored numerous outdoorsy destinations and fell in love with Zermatt, a car free village at the base of the Matterhorn in Switzerland.
Summer after summer, we’ve returned to Zermatt, where gondolas and cable cars whisk you up the mountain to begin your hikes in an alpine zone amidst soaring snow covered peaks and massive glaciers. Where a family rail pass means only the adults pay — kids under 18 are free on trains, buses, gondolas. Where there are the most incredible playgrounds in the mountains. Where mountain restaurants serve delicious meals and have trampolines for the kids. Where a flock of goats with tinkling bells around their necks are walked through the village twice a day to pasture and home again, shepherded by local children. It’s where we found a place to grow and take on increasing challenges together. The scenery is breathtaking and the activity we do every day — just walking together, rinse and repeat — is incredibly simple and yet…
We’ve each discovered mountain favorites, returning to these touchstone activities year after year. Mimi loves to build rock towers and we stop on many a hike for her to build them. An hour, sometimes more. My husband loves to skip stones and loves the icy milky blue color of the glacial fed lakes and rivers in the Alps, so we stop for that. Giselle loves the sweetness of connecting with the mountain animals. She’s shown us with her tenderness towards the mountain sheep and goats, that in going to them gently, they return the affection, so of course we stop for that too. I love the challenge of the difficult climbs and so everyone entertains that too, those climbs where all you really think about is your breath and one foot in front of the other. In doing these things together, and in simply walking in this beautiful natural setting, we’ve found a way to slow down time, and to simply be. And maybe it is in the “being” that we have found a special kind of happiness together, the very thing I yearned for for my family.
As we’ve grown in Zermatt, we’ve transitioned from shorter hikes, afternoons spent at lakeside playgrounds and building countless fairy houses in the woods, to climbing to mountain huts and challenging heights. We’ve hiked the steep climb up to and across the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the world, and made it to the base camp of the Matterhorn. We’ve hiked with ten Secret Service agents and hiked just the girls and me, but mostly us family four. Giselle understood something as a middle schooler when she looked out across a glacial valley at the snowy Swiss Alps and said “I get it mommy, I know why we’ve come here and I hope to return here every summer of my life.” Years later, after the grueling hike to the Hornlihutte, the base camp of the Matterhorn, she looked back on the mountain as we wound our way down and said, “so it’s true, the hardest hikes are the best ones” and I said “yes, it’s a way to access your powerful core, your truest self, and that strength is within wherever you go.” And now, she’s gone off to college in the beautiful state of Maine, taking that knowledge with her, informing her choices about the path she will make for herself, and what she herself brings to her journey.
Back home, I showed my elderly mother pictures from our first hiking trip in Zermatt and she told me “ah, the smallness of our place in the vastness of the universe” and that was right. Indeed, we are so small amidst these massive mountains, but that doesn’t diminish us — instead, it fills our hearts with awe, it strengthens each of us and at the same time bonds us sharing in the grandeur of the outdoors. And so, we keep hitting the trails together.
