In Search of Heidi - 7 luglio, 2014

I have made some wonderful friends through the International Club of Como and one of those friends is Kim from Northern Ireland. She likes to hike as much as I do and I have learned to always take it seriously when she invites me to go on an adventure with her. She is married to an Italian man and has lived in Northern Italy for 30 years, so she really knows some special areas that are truly off the beaten path.

And it is no secret that I suspect that Heidi was a distant relative of mine or that when I was younger, I pretended that I was a member of the Von Trapp family.  Reading Johanna Spyri's classic book and my repeated viewings of The Sound of Music imprinted on me an uncontrollable urge to run singing through Alpine fields of wildflowers. So last week, when I joined Kim and two other women friends for a girls' road trip to Livigno, I was in for a treat. We ended up in the storybook landscape that I had long hoped to find someday.

Livigno is in an isolated valley high in the Alps in a part of Italy that is tucked up into eastern Switzerland, not far from both Austria and Lichtenstein.  The Swiss town of Maienfeld which actually inspired the setting for Heidi, is only about 50 km (30 miles) away.  Livigno, which is a ski resort town in the winter, has an elevation of 1816 meters or almost 6,000 feet.   High mountain pastures abundant with wildflowers rise above the village to forests of fir trees and then up to stark granite mountain peaks.  Animals graze in the pastures and as they move around, the sound of their bells drifts up and down the hillsides.

We took a gondola up to the top of the ski area and then hiked for several hours on trails above the tree line. I met a couple in their 80's who were stretched out on a blanket at a scenic overlook: they told me that hiking in the high altitude keeps them young.  Another day, after we awoke to frost on the ground (it's July) we went for a bike ride along the river bike trail. We met more cows, goats, and horses. We also stopped at the community cooperative "latteria" where the local milk, cheeses and yogurt were served.  Even though, I didn't actually get a glimpse of Heidi, I do feel like I might have met Peter the goatherd and I saw several huts her grandfather might have lived in.  As we drove away, up over the Bernina Pass, I could still hear the music of the bells, softly clanking.

Bettina, Kim, Cammie, Jeanne  (Photo by fellow hiker)