~mountain slut~

May 18th, 2008

is what my boyfriend is.
(he also rarely reads this blog, so I am at liberty to out him while twirling my dastardly mustache…)

I relish a good range, and the Alps are the finest–grand, playful, spooky–but I am not moved to throw myself down in the wild pansies and make grass angels, and that’s precisely what Alfonso did.

The man loves mountains. We could call him a Mountain Man I spose, but we don’t. We call him a Mountain Slut cause snowy or grass-covered, he just can’t say “No” to the hills and valleys.

We drove part of the old Great Saint Bernard Pass from Switzerland to Italy–a truly magical bit of hwy–and all the way there and all the way back Ali exclaimed,

“I want to drive ALL the old passes with you!”

and “We gotta come back here!”

and “Look! Kimmi!”

We sang in our spookiest voices to Ghost Town by The Specials. (Ali is an 80s Music Slut as well, and I don’t encourage that generally, however one must keep the driver happy…)

We made a wish on a giant dandelion. We paid 30EU to drive the Grand Saint Bernard Tunnel. Ouch!

We stopped at a roadside inn, Mont Velan, in Saint-Oyen (in the Aosta Valley) and had dinner prepared by a very kind woman (sage ravioli for madame, salmon tartar for Mountain Slut). We admired the view and the curvy grandfather clock and the sepia pictures of people cross-country skiing and winning no-hands pie (?) eating contests back when life was…different.

But then we had to push on, for there were more mountains to cover.

You gotta admit, the resemblance IS uncanny…