fat camp

We just got back from hiking 100 miles through the Alps, through parts of Switzerland, Italy, and France.  The partner claims I tricked him into Fat Camp by calling it vacation. He lost 8 pounds despite eating and drinking quite heartily, as did most of the other guys on the trek who were all tightening their belts another notch each day.  The women, including me, were not losing anything.  Apparently this is how women's bodies work--we can go the long haul by holding on tightly to our fat stores.  This could be good in a tight situation, but so far it seems I've not missed enough meals to need the small spare tire around my middle as emergency sustenance.  This is all neither here nor there, but John has given me fair warning that he is unlikely to be tricked so easily again. 

Fat camp or vacation, whichever you want to think of it, was fantastic, even the above-mentioned complainant admits.  The sights every day, all day, were some of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen in my life.  At times it was so stunningly beautiful it didn't feel real.  We ambled up bucolic grassy mountains covered in rhododendrons and a hundred other delicate Alpine flowers, climbed fiercely windy and rocky mountainous ridges, made daring stream and ice crossings, scampered up endless-seeming paths of boulders, and followed ancient Roman roads and more recent cow trails.  There was very often the sounds of cow bells ringing through the mountains. At lunch time, we'd eat the lunch we'd packed in the morning--local cheeses, meats, and fruits, while sitting on the ground looking at some incredible mountain view.  It was all hard and it was all beautiful.  Each night but one, we dropped back down into a valley and stayed in a small auberge, ate good food and drank good wine, then got showers and soft beds before we started out the next morning.  One night we stayed in a refugio, a large hut up in the mountains, something like a hostel, in which we all showered in communal showers, slept in communal bedrooms, and ate communal meals.  Even then, we had a blast laughing and taking in the beauty of the mountains at night.

And thus we completed the Tour du Mont Blanc, a trail that has been hiked for hundreds of years by different kinds of travelors--traders, herders, explorers, tourists.