e is away....: The Mountains' Picnic

G announced last minute that we would have a little sausage roast at my favorite place outside of Lech. It only takes 15 minutes or so to drive there along a road that is closed to traffic during the day. We have had picnics (epic picnics-lordy) there before, with large groups and the river filled with wine bottles, but I had never been in the evening.
It is very difficult to describe how stunning the scenery is-and I mean that literally-it stuns you into silence. The first thing one notices is the absolute solitude: I have never seen another person there besides us, and it always makes me slightly giddy. It is a biblical-like oasis: rolling mounds of wild grass, leading to a river of fresh drinkable water, that in turn leads to a waterfall and a turquoise blue pool. Surrounding us on all sides, very close by, are the mountains. And without human chatter and chair lifts and car noise, the mountains somehow come alive: as if we have peeked into the children's play room and seen the toys playing. They are at the picnic; or perhaps we are at theirs. That's the only way I can describe it.
Anyway I love it so much, and the Schneiders know this, so they always try to get me there.

The menu is "Arlberg fitness" shall we call it: sausages and cheese appetizers; sausage main course; potato salad. G has brought beers galore, five bottles of wine (for four adults) and no water. In fairness, the river water tastes like something out of Willy Wonka. I am not kidding. It is delicious (when is water delicious?) It really is.
K is telling me the story of the soccer players who crashed in the Andes and turned to cannibalism and she is soberly describing how they did not cook the bodies-they ate them sort of frozen- and sliced thinly. Then they discreetly put the slices onto the side of the plane, for anyone's anonymous use, should they become desperate. "You know like Carpaccio..."
Well I come unglued. She is literally the most obsessed about food girl I know..and I know a few (my bloggers are the best eaters), but she is a new level. Somehow, even in a story like this, she mentions Italian dishes. So off I go: I am unleashed for the rest of the night, amusing one and all with soccer player carpaccio jokes.

Thomas said wryly that she and I would start eating the men immediately, dead or not.

Ok now don't get sensitive! F already in a veeery teenager who hasn't eaten or slept enough moment said to us: You do know you are laughing about cannibalism don't you?
No. We are laughing at Katia and the idea that she would have fashioned an apron out of leaves and a chefs hat out of an air sickness bag, and would have started peeling carrots in the jungle. so there. Do not write in with complaints.

Where was I? So Ida serves us drinks (she is a heavy pour that child..very loose wrist), and G makes the fire, and I approach with this sausage dangling precariously on a stick, ready to do battle.
Oh San Francisco....I really am out of my league. It is all wrong: needs to be re fashioned on the stick, placed on a rock just so, nurtured into toasty brown perfection. All performed by our hero G. Ida has us play a game where we each have a name on our heads and we ask questions until we guess who we are. It got confusing because G put a right wing Austrian politician on Thomas that very few of us had heard of, and I got Brigitte Bardot. ( I don't mean to brag; actually I really do, but in moments of great passion, G calls me B for Brigitte and this is why I am friends with him. )

None of us wanted to leave, but the darkness, and Luis' need to see the last half of the soccer match ended the evening. So we gathered what food was left and tottered over the mounds of grass through the trees, to the base of the mountains where our cars sat waiting.

How I wish I could show you all this sacred place. We could tip toe in like one does into a sleeping baby's room. And we could whisper and giggle and marvel at our good fortune at being together -together at the Mountains' picnic.