The latter also comprise my colleagues at the K-11 school in Zuoz, Switzerland, at which I taught.
Many from a third group have gotten to “know” me through the media’s reports on my first expedition in the canton of Graubünden. As I have had repeated occasion to learn, this group has had a hard time grasping why I have chosen to take this course of action. Their “explanations” include that I am having a midlife crisis, that I am dropping out of society, that I am on an ego trip or that I am a publicity hound.
A woman came up to me after I had given a lecture, and said, in all frankness: “You are naive! Why are you doing this?” Her tone was patronizing and accusatory. Its implicit question was “how can anyone give up everything near and dear for a vision or for a mission?”
As is probably the case with all of us, the seeds of this revolutionary change in my life were planted in my childhood. I well remember an important moment in my life. It took place at a small brook, which ran through the vicinity of Ardez, a village in Switzerland’s region of Lower Engadine. This was where I grew up, where my father was the teacher at the village’s school. My father had two great hobbies: making music and keeping bees.
All throughout my childhood, in August and the end of the summer holidays, it was my job to help my father harvest the honey produced by his bees. My father and I would lift the honeycombs from the boxes containing the bees. We would then knock the remaining bees off the honeycombs. This would send the bees tumbling into the containers designed to catch them. Our next job was to place each of the honeycombs in their designated places in the large-sized box, which was capacious enough to keep them separate from each other.
The center of our beekeeping was a hut that stood all by itself on a meadow located near Ardez. The hut was surrounded by bushes, flowers and deciduous trees. In my mind, I recall the honey harvest’s as always having taken place on sunny days whose warmth would turn the interior of the hut into an oven. My father’s philosophy was to not harvest all of the honey, but, rather, to leave several full-length honeycombs for the bees. This enabled them to survive the winter in their sanctuary of their box. My father was very close to his bees, even though there were thousands of them, all completely anonymous, each lacking a name. Despite this, my father was involved with each and every one of his “lady employees”. I believe that my father placed great importance on being a member in good standing of a large cycle of activity. This “membership” required his respecting and caring for “his” bees in ways—such as the leaving them enough honey to thrive mentioned above—showing his gratitude for and appreciation of them and their work. My father was neither plunderer nor exploiter. He was, rather, a “coexister”, one cultivating a reciprocity of utility and protection, of living and let live.
During such “honey harvesting”, our wont was to work for two hours in our hut, and then, as a relief from its sauna-like temperatures, to take a break. We would walk for ten minutes to the Valdez. This little stream tumbled downwards to the En river. Prior to our sitting down on the stream’s banks, we would check to make sure that no bees had hidden themselves in the other’s jacket or under the protective veil. The harvesting— which yielded a large range of quantities of honey—left the bees aggressive. We had no intention of being stung by them. This would hurt us—and cause them to die.
Once we were sure that we were bee-free, we would then unpack our picnic basket, which held sweet cider, coffee and cookies, and have a snack, during which we would let our feet dangle in the water.
Once during such brook-side snacks, I posed the following question to my father. Speaking in the local language of Rhaeto-Romanic, I said “Dad, if you could do it all over again, what would you change?” His answer: “I would have showed less respect for authority.” My father did not mean by that he would have been more impudent or arrogant, or less law-abiding. His wish was, rather, to have displayed more courage when living his life.
The brook rushed past our feet. Its water did not, however, take my father’s words with it. These words stayed, rather, with me, shaping my life in the process.
I have now reached the age of my father at the time of this conversation. Even in those days, though still a boy, I grasped the import of his words. These words have never stopped gaining pertinence to my life. My being an “ambassador for water” has caused me to expose myself more and more to the general public. That requires my repeatedly calling upon my courage. There are times when criticism or the failure of an action to proceed as planned cause me to want to hide. This wish is always countered by the realization that my failure to stand up for my objectives and values would cause me to regret my having given in to my fears my life long.
Once our break was over, my father and I packed our basket, donned the white overalls and the veils, made sure that everything was intrusion-proof, and walked slowly back to the beekeeping hut. The next beehive awaited us. Later on, after we had brought the honeycombs back home and had placed them in the basement, it was time for my mother to do her thing. She was responsible for two key phases of honey harvesting: the spinning of the comb to release its honey, and the latter’s being filled into preserving jars. The honey was a yellow miracle.
Milk and honey—figuratively and literally—do thus flow in Switzerland’s Lower Engadine region. But no one swims in either liquid—nor anywhere else in the canton. In my childhood, no one knew how to swim. Sports were in those days already a great passion of mine. I was a passionate cyclist. Swimming was simply not an option—and remained such until I at the age of 25 encountered Gunther Frank. He was a lecturer on swimming at the University of Basel, which is located on the Rhine. This opened up a new world for me.
I am convinced of the following. Had I learned to swim as a child and had this been in swimming pools, I would have never become a long-distance swimmer. Those who swim in pools see the water as being another piece of equipment. They see swimming as being an athletic “competition”, one whose “rules” they observe while pursuing it. When I am on a swimming expedition, I feel more like a sailor than a swimmer. I pick a course and swim in the direction that I myself choose.
It was Gunther Frank who kindled this passion in me. His face would light up while discussing even the tiniest of turbulences and underwater currents formed by the swimmer’s hands and feet. His passion caused him to give hours-long talks from his vantage point on the edge of the pool. Gunther’s audience was his swimmers, and his subject was their—often tiny—errors in form.2
During my study of physical education at the University of Basel, I never went—not a single time—swimming in the Rhine or in a lake. Despite this, it was my studies and specifically Gunther Frank which and who gave me the deep-seated trust in my ability to go my own way. I of course had no way of anticipating at that time that this way would take the form of expeditions in Graubünden, in other parts of Switzerland, and in other countries traversed by the Rhine—Gunther was in fact very negative about swimming in the river. Had I not gotten to know Gunther and had not learned from him the ability to “read” water, there never would have been a “blue miracle”.
Many years late, Gunther was about to retire. He asked me whether I wanted to be his successor at the University of Basel. After a long period of careful consideration, I turned the offer down. I was not enthusiastic about a future comprised of teaching swimming from the edge of a pool—and of working in a regimented environment. The search for a challenge worth mastering went on.
No blue blood, but a “blue miracle”
Notwithstanding the words uttered by my father on the banks of the stream, what I lacked for a long period of time was the courage to finally go my own way. This is never easy to do, especially when you’ve grown up in a world in which everything— even the smallest of things— is governed by society-imposed imperatives. Switzerland’s Lower Engadine region is beautiful. Its
