The Roads We Travel
Blue Sky Black Sheep Prompt
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
We’d taken to the town less travelled by, and called it home for 3 years time. It took to us, in its own southern California way, hillsides settling around us like a mother cradling her babe. A small town, barely ever sketched to the corner of an angeleno map, but ours nonetheless.
“How are you finding small town living?” “How are you coping with the slow Leysin lifestyle?” I hear the same questions at every-other dining hall meal. “Must be a big change from California”
Is this small town living, truly? I find myself wondering. This new town has three grocery stores all within walking distance, a hospital, cafes and restaurants to nearly make a baker’s dozen. Cars and hikers and bikers and a regular flood of boarding schoolers… and schoolees.
How can this be a small town, when we traded wide-eyed skies for windy crash-ridden roads. The trees give me claustrophobia. The cars and apartment buildings make it worse. My neighbors are my friends are my coworkers are my bosses are my dinner table guests are my dog walkers are my observers are slowly suffocating me.
Living in a small apartment surrounded by all the people you know in this part of the world, who “know” you but really only have had a surface level glimpse. An apartment building next to apartment buildings separated by earthy patches and rogue pines. Green grass that is always on the other side of someone else’s fence.
What once were evening walks on empty vineyard backroads are now hikes past people filled spewing anxieties, dreams, thoughts… I feel them all, absorbing through the bottoms of my feet echoing in my skull with every passing step.
And it never stops, this small quiet town that just won’t give me peace. Only up or down to go, no rest for the weary. Wildflowers as far as the eye can see but not a single slope smooth enough to set a blanket upon. Here, they hike, ski, run, climb, soar. Here, they chat and chase and travel and scarf down plate after plate of raclette, a race for the saltiest cheesiest morsel, waiter perfectly poised to deliver the next plate, and the next. A gluttonous rush lest we discover our stomachs discontent -- we’ll deal with that in the morning.
Never mind forgetting to check that we’re breathing, here we pretend breath is but an unnecessary surplus. Here, in this huffing and puffing small town in the mountains. Here, in this alpine resort littered with street lamps breaking into my bedroom at every hour of the night.
Here, I wish for the small town that took me in, and wonder if I’ll ever take to this one quite the same.
Love from Leysin,
sbmc
