11 Years Ago (My L'Abri Story, Part One)

The blue and boxy dinosaur-sized bus screeched and jerked as the driver released the brake and shifted into first gear. Advertisements on the outer shell of this tidy Swiss specimen of public transportation raced past me, down the mountain and out of sight.

There we stood, my father's ragged brown suitcase and I, plus my precious guitar, tottering on a 4- foot platform overhanging an Alpine valley 3,000 feet below.

The smoke from the exhaust had long since dissipated, but the steam from my own breath rhythmically washed over my face. The air bit, but that wasn't the reason my fingers tingled at the tips, under my fingernails. Two lanes of potential traffic separated me from the gravel driveway on the other side. A couple shoddy mailboxes stared me down, but courage had brought me this far.

I stepped out into the deserted road.

The awkwardness of turning my suitcase to face the direction of my pulling amplified as I wrangled my guitar into compliance with the will of my other hand.

This pause to situate meant I stalled in the danger zone.

Halfway across, determined but alone, I realized that my yolk of luggage was not easy, nor was my guitar light...and that car racing towards me didn't seem to notice a small-town girl on her first solo European adventure.

Rolling the wheels of my suitcase in a forward direction had been tricky enough. But the present situation required a backwards momentum that sent me tripping and scared, back onto the platform-precipice. The sliding handle of my now regretfully-large bag was stuck. I smacked it, and pushed my orangey-colored hair out of my eyes.

I looked around.

A chunky, dirty pile of snow, scooped mostly to one corner of the bus stop platform, stayed well out of my way. And it's a good thing, too! This girl was going on about 3 hours' sleep in the last 24. Navigating confused and emotional goodbyes, two flights, one trans-Swiss train ride, and one wildly perilous bus ride left me feeling like those mailboxes had the upper hand. Steady and seasoned, their knobby eyes changed suddenly.

What had seemed like a threat melted as my eyes shot up and to the right.

There stood a welcome I desperately needed: a worn, wood-burned sign pointing me to my new home:

...

This story was inspired by a conversation with an artist-friend at L'Abri, Heidy Chuang, and just might be the beginning of a series of reminiscences from my first days and months here in Huemoz.