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Case study #3: Teen or barely out of that bracket young dude on empty main road running through the Swiss National Park, April 2007
I had completed a solitary hike on one of the smaller circuits in the Swiss National Park and was feeling fantastic. The weather was fine and the sky was a very pale blue with light filtering through in thousands and thousands of pinpoint streams. It wasn’t just the weather that was making me feel good, I was proud that I had convinced myself to continue on with the hike after I had encountered an information board 10 minutes in helpfully teaching me about bears, wolves and mountain cats. The first two were extremely unlikely to appear, the third was apparently a reality but also a reality more shy than ferocious. So……. in actuality there was no big threat, it’s more that on the off chance something did happen I knew I wouldn’t know what to do. My physical presence is scary to neither humans nor animals. Therefore it was an achievement that I had plucked on through despite my insecurity about accidentally getting myself into a throwdown with an annoyed animal.
See another reason why I was so happy about my hike was because I had gotten sooooooo close to the murmeli (see the picture above or scroll down to near the bottom of this page here) 
x a million! However um…. murmeli usually make warning calls and run away when they feel/hear the rumbling of the feet of approaching intruders. I was crouching on the ground talking to them (mostly along the lines of “Oh I’m so happy you’re letting me be here with you! Thank you! Ooi! Oh I’m so happy, thank you!” Ahem. Ergo, even the murmeli didn’t consider me a threat. I’m so much bigger than them… sigh.
One stretch of road runs through the Swiss National Park. Bus stops line it on either side at regular and well-spaced intervals, in many cases though the entry and exit for a track will not sit right beside a bus stop, you may have to walk for 20 minutes along the road to get to one. Also interspersed with these roadside landmarks are some carpark areas. Read the rest of this entry »
