The Austrian Alps

From Neushwanstein, I headed south through the Tyrol mountains into Austria. My goal was Innsbruck. That’s where the Winter Olympics were held in 1976.

In 1976 my family was living in Woodridge, Illinois. I was entranced by the Olympics. As soon as supper was over and the dishes sloshing away in the dishwasher, I sat on the old brown couch in the den, my eyes focused on the television. I grew up in Texas, where little hummocks are called hills, and lived in Illinois, which does not even have hummocks. On television each program of the Olympics began with the camera gliding over the snow-capped tops of the Austrian Alps. So beautiful!

I longed to see those mountains. At that time it seemed an impossible dream. I was enmeshed in taking care of house and children, working to pay Martha’s college tuition, and trying in every way I could to please my husband. I could not foresee any change in my life as a suburban housewife. Yet only two years later here I was, putt-putting that little Opal through the mountains from Germany and into Austria.

A heavy blanket of fog hung over Innsbruck. David and I spent several days waiting for the fog to lift. It never did. We could not glimpse of a single mountain peak.

On our final day I looked at the map and realized that the city was at the base of the Brenner Pass, which separates Austria from Italy. I drove up the mountain to the border at the top of the pass. At the border our little car was waved through the barriers, but I was surprised to see on the other side of the highway a long line of huge trucks, stretching all down the mountainside on the Italian side, waiting for approval to cross into Austria. Since then the Euro Zone has simplified things, and trucks can drive all over Western Europe without being stopped at a border crossing.
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As we started down the mountainside, the sun came out. Before me the Italian Alps were a panorama of snow-capped mountains, as beautiful as the pictures I’d seen of the Olympics. I cried out, “David! Look at the mountains!”

He said, “Oh, yeah.”

David grew up in Illinois where he sloshed through a foot of snow walking to school in long, bitter cold, Northern winters. Snow-capped mountains did not excite him. Now he lives in Southern California.

Coming down from the Brenner, we drove into a little Italian town, where everything was closed up tight. David and I could not find a place to get a cup of tea or a Coke. So much for my first visit to Italy. We returned to Innsbruck in time for supper.

A few years later I moved to New Mexico. From the patio of my little house on Albuquerque’s West Mesa, I had a view of mountains. At 10,600 feet, Sandia Mountain is higher than any peak in Germany. When houses were built behind me, obstructing my view, and the kidney doctor said I had to go on dialysis, I returned to Texas after a hiatus of over 50 years.

I still miss New Mexico – and those beautiful mountains.