Alles Gute zum Geburtstag: A birthday for the ages

I turned 34 last week. My favorite thing to do on my birthday the last few years is to just be in nature, reconnect with who I am, who I want to be. Try to spot what is going right and what is not. 

Covid 19 has defined this year. It governs every decision from how to go to the store to how to travel around. To combat the fatigue of quarantine, every once in a blue moon we try to get a little farther from home. Renting a car helped us extend the leash that has tethered us to our apartment.

Friday we went to a remote region on the Swiss section of the Tour du Mont Blanc (an ultra marathon route going through France, Italy, and Switzerland) so I could get a bit of a taste for it. Let me just say that it was oh so sweet. The trail was pretty stunning but rugged. 

Cambrie came and opted to hang out by Lac de Champex while I went for my excursion of self-discovery.

The actual trail peaks at Fenetre de l'Arpette. I was 800 meters away, but it was a bit too snowy and boulder strewn to find my path without risking breaking my leg so I shifted my plans a bit. There was a steep chute that seemed to give a similar view so I risked the scramble and was satisfied enough with what I saw to come back.

The next day we thought we would take it easy. Let me try that again, we THOUGHT we'd take it easy. We tried driving to Oeschinen lake and found out once we were there that it's a four mile round trip hike with quite a bit of vertical gain. I asked Cambrie what she wanted (you know, 8 months pregnant Cambrie) and she suggested we saunter along the trail and she would stop whenever she got tired. She did the entire thing! Hero points for her. We had great views of the valley below, even though the lake was a bit crowded. 

 

An Insider's View into the Mind of an Expecting Parent

10:30 pm. 

I settle into my comfortable chair and started reading a Chinese sci-fi, not my typical choice but it's turning out to be pretty interesting. It was an exhausting 13 hour day of work starting early and ending late. Cambrie is getting ready for bed. I hear her call my name across the apartment. Not uncommon, she loves attention. I lazily respond, "What?". She yells again, but this time I detect a hint of worry in her voice. Not a lot, just enough to real in my attention.

I get up to investigate further.

"Bryce, I fell."

"Are you ok? How did you fall?"

"I feel fine." Uncomfortably long pause, "I fell on my back, so not on my belly. What do we do?"

My fingers grip my phone and ask the parenting gurus of the internet for help. This is what hours of Instagram scrolling has trained me for. Cue Rocky soundtrack as my fingers sweep across the phone with the dexterity of a teenager. It only takes a few seconds.

"Call the midwife. Definitely since you're in the third trimester."

During the call my brain is waking up again. For the first time in my life I feel pangs of worry for my child. Wait, let me re-punctuate that last part...MY child! I can't help but worry that this seemingly small incident hurt him, possibly seriously. As my mind spins through worst case scenarios, eventually I can't help but realize how woefully unprepared I am for what's coming. 

Even in the best case scenario, I am in for a lifetime of these kinds of worries. Every time he trips and bumps his head. Every time I carry him around and risk dropping him. Every time he leaves my sight. No matter how careful I am, this little guy is going to get hurt sometimes. He's going to feel pain, from the very beginning. 

If you would like to live your life not knowing an uncomfortable truth, skip this next paragraph. If you read on you will lose just a little bit of that childish innocence you still cling to. It will haunt you. I wash my hands of this and you have been warned.

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I recently learned that babies born via Caesarean section don't come into contact with essential bacteria from the mothers' vaginas and that causes problems with developing healthy gut bacteria. This has been solved by swabbing the baby's face with the bacteria after birth. However recently doctors have discovered that bacteria from the mothers' feces is missing. Researchers have started feeding a dose of it to babies and it seems to be helping. My point of delving so deep into the disgusting reality of human genesis is that our very beginning of life is horrifying. So much that it's hard for people to even think about. I mean, did you enjoy reading that little fact? NO!

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I am brought back. We make our way to the hospital. The midwife is wonderful. So cheerful, peaceful, calming. She asks many questions. We listen to our child's heart for thirty minutes. He is fine. We go home. We are exhausted. 

A few days pass. Now as I sit in bed I can see his shape moving on Cambrie's belly. A thought occurs to me and I play Pachelbel's Canon in D, holding my phone to her belly so maybe he can hear. He kicks and wiggles. We laugh.

"With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy." -Max Ehrmann

Home is Where the Heart is: A Walk Through Bern

 

Since the pandemic pulling a "Pinky and the Brain" (taking over the world...get it?) right now, we are forced to shut in a bit more. Nonetheless, I get antsy pretty quickly so instead of exposing ourselves to public transportation, restaurants, hotels, and people in general, we have been exploring around here more lately.

First we start with the bears. There are three who live on a hillside by the river 5 minutes from us. I assume this one takes his porridge particularly hot and is pretty upset about someone sleeping in his bed.

We took a stroll today to enjoy Autumn in the city, so here are some pictures of that.

Bern with the Alps in the background

I don't know why, but I always love seeing mushroom clusters

Under the bridge

A very unique part of Bern is that clean water surrounds you at all times. The crystalline Aare River surrounds the city (it is a tradition to float down the river, which we have done several times). There are also 100 public fountains around the city center, most from the 16th century. In the background the Zytglogge, an 800 year old astronomical clock tower, can be seen. We live just to the left of this fountain above an antique shop. I hope I am never numb to the beauty of this city.

Great Swiss Bakeoff

I don't know if it's her motherly instincts kicking in, the excess time-off, or inspiration from above, but Cambrie has been baking more than she ever has. Everyone voted and we're happy about it.

It's so fun for us to plan new things to bake and to find new occasions to justify the effort. I think it's also funny because Cambrie has always sworn that she hates cooking in any form. People have often tried to convince her that if she just gets into it she would like it, but she adamantly argued that she was never born to cook. I guess our interests, passions, and convictions change over time. It does make me think that there could be hobbies or ideas out there that I have rejected but I may like now. If anyone out there in the universe reading this has an experience like that I'd love to hear about it.

While we've been in Bern (about a month now), she has baked mini key lime pies:

She made cinnamon rolls (pictured unfrosted, how scandalous):

Cookies:

And my personal favorite, the elegant cheese danish:

Not pictured, healthy muffins...weird that we didn't take a picture of those...don't read into it.

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Added Oct. 25th 

Phenomenal pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.

Lauterbrunnen and Mürren

 We wanted to celebrate Cambrie's birthday a few weeks ago by taking a small trip to the Dolomites. However, several weekends of rainy forecasts have delayed us. This weekend, despite another rainy forecast, we decided to go to Lauterbrunnen and Mürren. It ended up being wonderful. We waited for the rain to finish in the morning and arrived just in time for some clear skies. 

We have been to the valley before, but this time it was even more magical. The mountains had just been dusted with first snow and the valley walls poured run off down countless waterfalls (we actually did count them once and could see around 15 large waterfalls). 

I went for a run through the valley and Cambrie for a walk. Running tends to ground me. I haven't been able to run all week due to some weird health issues (BPPV is a special kind of hell. I've never tried psychedelics before, but it felt like I was on what I imagine a bad trip to be). 

After we explored the valley we decided to explore the cliffs above by taking a cable car and train to Murren.

We have wanted to ride a snowy mountain train so it was exciting to find this one. When we got to Murren we were both surprised how abandoned it was. Only a few travelers were there, which for me made it even more magical.

Meiringen to Grindelwald

Last weekend I ran the trail from Meiringen to Grindelwald. It's about 14 miles. It's so hard to get myself moving in the mornings after a long week at work. But every time I do there is a moment when I first realize it's completely worthwhile. This was that moment last Saturday. The woman is just some random backpacker, but I love how this picture captures how I felt about the day. Excited just to see what was around each corner.

I chose this hike for two reasons: 

1) I had never been to Grindelwald, and have heard good things about it

2) One of my ancestors is from Meiringen and I wanted to see it (Melchior Kohler, cool name right?). 

The trail was incredible. I didn't run out of water, and 14 miles seemed like a cakewalk compared to my last trail run here.

The run led up to a ridge dividing the mountains. This is the view I was rewarded with for my long climb. Grindelwald is far below in the mist. There was a woman selling cheese in one of those little huts (I was tempted to stop and get some, but didn't want to carry a wheel of cheese the remaining 6 miles). 

At the end of the run I met Cambrie in Grindelwald. We originally intended to spend a bit of time in the town, but I had just run through it and she spent the morning there on her own hike (btw, I'm super impressed how independent and brave she is. Totally over the culture shock). So we decided to enjoy the beautiful train ride through the Alps back to Bern.

 

Zermatt/Matterhorn

We took a trip to see the Matterhorn. No deeper thoughts on the trip, just a fun morning with Cambrie. She was super impressive. We hiked 6.5k. That's 1k for each month of pregnancy! All it took was us taking our time, no rush. Lots of her scowling at me as I would run off to look at a glacier or something. You know, taking time for the really good stuff in life. 

The Matterhorn itself had half cloud cover, so we didn't get an iconic shot of it, but you work with what you have.