Mont Blanc Returns from Holiday

Many who don’t live in Switzerland and have never visited here find it hard to believe that any mountain, especially one as big as Mont Blanc, can disappear even on the clearest of days, but it can and it does. That made its appearance yesterday even more exciting as it made the perfect backdrop to the water spouting up from the lake.

When I was first working in Geneva, I got a call from my boss. “Come quick.” He hung up before I could answer, and I rushed to his office, not to be greeted with a catastrophe but a perfect view of Mont Blanc from his window. “I haven’t seen it in weeks,” he said.

In my imagination I see the mountain packing its suitcase full of rocks, trees and streams and saying, “Think I’ll go to the south of Italy for a while.” Of course, newspapers never report it as a celebrity visitor, so maybe it finds other places to hide when it is not gracing Geneva with its beauty.