PETER LIECHTI (1951-2014)
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ALPINE FORAYS (1986, Fiction/Essay, 3:4, 16mm blow-up comopt; DVD / DigiBeta, 33')
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A Trip to the Mountains

A mountain litany: Glatz and Schlund, Saustein and Schätteregg, Üble Schlucht and Schrecken. Motten, Stollen, Tote Alpe, Eisengülle, Metzgertobel, Nonnenalp and Ritzenspitzen. Schmalzberg and Saustein. Höllritzeralp and Kackenköpfe. Gurgen Wäldle, Töbele, Kratzer, Krottenkopf, Mädelegabel, Madloch, Schiggen, Totenfeld and Schrottenkopf. Krofen, Gufel, Schritzer, Schlipfhalden and Kahlrücken. Hoher Riffler, Knittelkarspitzel, Laufbichel, Schreierkopf and Sinnesbrunnen. Gungelgrün and Grottenkopf. Pestkapelle, Säuling, Faselfad and Gries and Schön. Köpfle, Mösle, Roter Schrofen, Schönjöchle, Schnatzerberg, Hintergiggel, Grins and Schweit. Hirschhals and Mutterkopf. Hexenkopf and Schruns. Heaven preserve!

Hochtann Mountain Pass. High up and firs. Mountain firs high up on the pass. At the top of the pass, the mountain firs. And Schröcken - fright - besides. Fear of the steep, fir-clad mountain slope. I continued up to the Hochtann Pass. Nothing frightening at all. Frightless. Parasol-strawberry terraces. Everything even redder, even browner than at home. So I went on. I lit a cigarette. At the top of the Hochtann Pass, I decided to stop. It must have been around noon. I booked a room. I looked out the window.

The house is crap. The room is shit. A good place to stay. After all, there's a window to look out of. Onto the slopes, into the mountains, into the sky, into the clouds. You climb up steep paths. Then you can look down at the tiny people from the chapel up there. You can look further up the slopes from there, too. You can look up to the highest mountains from there. To the craggy peaks, to the summits all the way on top. Sweep the valleys through binoculars. Pause in mountain peace. Immobility from above. From the highest heights everything looks flat. A slightly sickish feeling. The sense of having to enjoy. The compulsion to savour being able to look down on everything. A quest for euphoria. Gasping for breath in the thin mountain air. I chase my thoughts down, but they ascend. A nasty lift sends them floating up. But they give up the ghost in the thin mountain air. The mountain destroys my thoughts. The mountain saps my brain.

I took a few photos. Of the opposite slope. It looks so soft. Cushions of green interlaced with mountain streams. I hope for chair lifts. I'd like a ride on a chair lift. Up to an infinitely high Alp on an infinitely long chair lift. I want to chair across pastures, brush cows' backs. I want to blink in the light, breathe in the breezes, take a little nap. Big birds to the right and left. Silver in the mountains. I get undressed. I lie on my stomach looking down on hot pastures. Very hot. Very dry. I'm freezing, I'm thirsty, I'm afraid. I want to get down to the valley right now. Down to the people. Down to the roads with their cars. The terraces and cakes in the valley. I've had enough of the room. I've had enough of it up here. I'm leaving, leaving.

Merciful snow, come and cover these slopes. Give some shape to this muck. Cover it up, cover it up! Cover up everything and keep it warm. Dear warm snow, cover up this nakedness. Give the muck-farmers some warm fur. Dear white snow, bring some colour up here. Bring the rattling of chains onto the roads. The scraping of ice in the morning. Help! Water instead of snow. That groaning on the slopes.

Just get away from the Hotel Enzian. Just get away from the raspberry gateau and the coughing boy. You have to have eaten the raspberry gateau there. So I ate the raspberry gateau. Yellow underneath, red on top. Pastry underneath, gelatine on top. And raspberries on top of that. Very red gelatine. I ate all that. With coffee. With the boy. He coughed his way through the whole hotel. A blond boy who coughed without stop. Mostly at me. He coughed right at me. "I need a cough lozenge. I need a cough lozenge." It was a hopeless cough. A disgusting, accusatory cough. There were no cough lozenges. My bad luck. And the gateau. My bad luck, too. It didn't help. On the contrary. The boy was envious. And he hacked away even harder. The dire terror of a hacking cough. The only option was to pay. To pay right away and leave. Leave the Hotel Enzian immediately.

There I stand, up on the mountain. I don't want anything from the mountain. Nothing at all. If at least it was a beautiful hump. But it's not a beautiful hump. On the contrary. It's unsightly. Not a place you want to stay. Merely unimpressive. Nothing to write home about. Only nothing-to-write-home-about to write about. I like full pages, I suppose. I want to liberate myself from the mountain with these pages. From all mountains. From rain and ugly slopes. Beautiful pages to combat ugly views. To combat distraught nature. The dearth up here entices into detail. There's no abundance up here. The details are bewildering. They lack coherence. They don't mirror the whole.

I want to draw attention to something. To that helicopter, for instance. That helicopter up there. The smell of kerosene in the mountain air. I've let the filming carry me away. I've used up one film after another. These incredible movements in the viewfinder. This creature I can feature. So I have no film left. I give up, give up watching. Whenever it leaves, the shit-slopes return.

I want a schnapps. To drink a schnapps in Bludenz. In BluBluBludenz. Bludenz isn't far from Bregenz. Bludenz makes me cheerful. Bludenz makes me warm. The warm air of the lowlands. Noodles and dumplings and lowlands. I stopped at an old-fashioned inn - Gasthaus zur Altdeutschen Stuben. At Mutterstrasse Seven in Bludenz. That's where I am now, not far from the Rhine Valley. I'm looking forward to the broad Rhine Valley. I drink a schnapps in the Altdeutsche Stuben. Drinking schnapps makes me feel good.

You always have to expect to get into a thunderstorm. It rains here all the time. It's a real rain barrel around here. Always wet. Always dark. Always too cold. I drank some coffee down in Lech. Surrounded by unsuspecting coffee drinkers. Unsuspecting Englishwomen, all of them sky blue. Unsuspecting Dutchmen, chattering away incessantly.

The Germans down there were unsuspecting, too. Old, unsuspecting Germans, all of them with a limp. And then a thunderstorm broke over all this unsuspectingness. Totally unsuspecting, I stepped into the Rüfikopf cable car. In the midst of the ride, the car stopped moving. Suddenly we all had a suspicion. Suddenly we all asked ourselves why we hadn't suspected anything before. Why we were all gripped by a suspicion only now that we were in the cable car. Only now that we were poised above the abyss. An abysmal suspicion had overtaken the formerly unsuspecting. A mountain storm gathering right now. And us in that storm. It was right there. We were in the middle of it. Hailstones the size of children's heads rained down on us. Everywhere on the Rüfikopf, children's-head-sized hailstones. Up on the Rüfikopf, the storm raged. Raged deafeningly. And darkness descended on the mountain.

The Schwarzenberg lass
wasn't averse to a pass.
Now she haunts the knolls
with the other lost souls.

The Schwarzenberg does
walk on their pointed toes,
past the little valley
of outcast souls.

It's getting a bit brighter. It's getting a bit darker. It's clearing up a bit. It's casting over a bit. The rain drips from the trees. The rain drips from all over. It's not even raining. You can't even call that drizzle. No, you have to call it dripping. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. Depending on whether it's clearing up a bit or casting over a bit. Occasionally a vehicle passes on the wet road. You can hear the dripping in the chestnut leaves. The drops fall on white garden tables. All this dripping gets me down. Maybe it was a mistake to come to Schwarzenberg. I came to Schwarzenberg because I don't want to go home yet. That's how I got into all this dripping. I'm on this trip to forget what this trip is supposed to be good for. In Schwarzenberg I remember what it's supposed to be good for. That's why it may have been a mistake to come to Schwarzenberg. Because now I have to endure all this dripping. The green drops right in front of my window. They trickle and fall, trickle and fall. I'm not keen on ordeals. Drops, yccch. Ordeals, vanish. Stop now, stop.

The Austrian schillings are pretty well used up. All gobbled up. I have this region to thank for my spending spree. Either it will devour me or I'll devour it. Either I have no schillings left or I have some schillings left. But I have so to speak no schillings left. So I'd better leave the area as quickly as I can. I prefer eating to hiking. Eaters are closer to me than hikers. Eaters, not gobblers. That's the unhealthy part. Compulsive gluttony is the unhealthy part. It's like hiking. It's the compulsion to hike that's unhealthy. There are eating hikers and gluttonous hikers. I'm neither one nor the other. Neither this kind of hiker nor that kind. I'm no hiker at all. But I've become a glutton.

In this dripping valley, I've become a glutton. It's not the food that's important. It's eating the food that's important. Radically devouring everything. Finishing off the mountains of food. Cleaning the plate is important. Usually horribly greasy food. Away with it, get it down as quickly as possible. Off the plate and into the stomach. Always a rush. I stuff myself. Beat myself up. It's sheer torture. Good thing the schillings are pretty well used up. Just one more night. One more breakfast. Then I'll sneak off.

A huge mass of food, this breakfast. A whopping mass. The waitress is a whopper, too. Pretty dishy, this waitress. Now see how you cope with this whopping dish. That's what the dishy waitress thinks, a combative look in her eye. She'll see how I cope with it. This mountain is my last mountain here in Austria. Clear away the mass, bit by bit. Get stuck in one more time. Just get it all down. I managed to cope with the rain, too. That was something as well, the rain. Already bucketing down early in the morning. The waitress brings the rainy breakfast in whopping masses. And, bit by bit, the monumental breakfast act is consummated.

Back to Lech again. A long way back by now. I wanted to visit the fishpond in Lech. Actually, it was the mental image that wouldn't let go of me. The image of a fishpond back there in the mountains. Haunted by images, I had to find that fishpond. The way to the green fishponds at the very end of the valley led past all the other ponds nestled among the mountains. How the fish lay in the still water. Like pieces of drifting wood. Masses of drifting wood. A wondrous calm lay over the drifting masses of fish. Like the calm after a catastrophe, it seemed to me. Or the calm before a catastrophe. Shy animals driven together into sluggish masses. For once, no rain. For once, no sound. Gentle movement in the green water. Far back in the mountains, the tranquil bodies in the water. Little white flakes on their noses. You see that very clearly from close up. They're ill, these lovely animals. White flakes are growing from their bodies. Everywhere in the green water, the white blooms of disease. Down there, below the green mountains, they drift, the white blossoms. All the way in the back of the beyond, the essential thing, finally. That's stayed with me.

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