Heinz Riegler

Tomorrow will be the third full moon I will get to see up here. It’s quite a spectacle in what is still a mostly snow-covered landscape. The white of the snow is set alight by the moon in the most peculiar way, best maybe described as an atmosphere that is akin to the vibe of some Tim Burton movie. ‘Sleepy Hollow’ comes to mind, not that I actually thought much of the movie, but it definitely had a look. And that’s kind of what the full moon nights look like up here. But not really.

Actually, I was on Fraser Island some years ago and I was walking around in one of the gigantic sand blows during a full moon night. I remember taking a bar of chocolate and a flask of tea up there, and anyway, it is of similar effect, obviously the sand replacing the snow; blah blah….
So if you’ve ever seen the full moon sitting on a Fraser Island sand blow, then you kind of know what I’m talking about.

So I’m up here for the third full moon. It happens tomorrow evening, and the forecast is of a cloudless night. So all set. I wish I could take good photographs, not that it would ever do justice to the scene. Anyway, that means I’ve been up here for around 2 and a bit months. A very good time I must say, as those of you who follow my dribble probably have gathered.

So what is this I ‘up here’ I speak off? Well, I wanted to try and explain, but be warned, I haven’t slept for a while and I am likely to wander off into minuscule and uninteresting detail. But I felt like writing it down anyway, so there you go.

Basically, the reason I’ve been awarded the stay in this cabin is because of my mother Victoria. It’s her side of the family that has had a cabin on these grounds for the last 400 odd years. The proper name for the place is Oberpleißling Alm. Oberpleißling is the name of the area, and Alm, well I think it means something like ‘high-alpine farming land’ (See what I mean about boring minuscule details?)

Here’s what happens. My mothers family have been dairy farmers for as long as anyone can remember. So over all these years, they’ve been running their farm down in the valley, but they also have this place up here, (1800 meters above sea level), ‘die Alm’, which has been used primarily as a grazing ground for their cattle and sheep during the summer time. So every year when the snow has melted and the grass has started to grow, the animals get driven up here to their grazing, while down in the valley they grow and harvest the grass on their property to store it for the wintertime, when all the stock pretty much just hangs out in the stables there.

This is where my mother comes into the picture. As the oldest daughter, it fell to her to spend her summers up here with the cattle, driving them out onto different plains in the morning, searching for them in the afternoons (there is no enclosures or fences, and apparently cattle can travel some distances when left to roam) to bring them back into the small stables that are attached to the place, milking them again early in the mornings, make cheese and butter during the day for the family down below, etc…

That was my mothers gig for a number of alpine summers, sometime in the sixties. And that’s where my father, Heinz Ulfila, the city slicker, comes into play. Being a displaced country boy himself, but having landed in the city of Vienna, him and his buddies used to come up here for their vacations. Sometime during the winter to ski, or during the summer to trek around the number of mountain peaks in the area.
And as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, one thing lead to another and one day Victoria and Heinz crossed paths. Her milking the cows, him probably coming down from some mountain peak.

And so it all happened from there. My father always claims that I was conceived up here in the cabin. That is probably too much information really, but he keeps saying it, all the while my mother is rolling her eyes, disputing the claim in no uncertain terms. But hey, I’ll stick with my fathers version for the sake of added drama.
Over the years, my family and I have spent many days up here, long after mum stopped being a ‘Sennerin’, (that’s the term for the high alpine farming girls) we’d come up here, climb mountains, enjoy the silence, play cards etc. It was quite a childhood in terms of nature and the freedom to roam.
One especially memorable time of being up here was when my second sister Manuela was born. I had been taken ill with the Mumps just as she was about to be born, and it was decided that I had to be away from mother and future sibling as not to transmit that virus to her.
I was only five years old, but I remember it vividly although I’m sure I’m embellishing the fuck out of this, because it just sounds all to cheesy, no? But hey, here we were, my father and I, quarantined in the cabin for about two weeks while my mum was down in the valley giving birth. This is long before the mobile phone, (in fact here has only been electricity up here for a 4 years now) and needless to say it was an anxious time for my dad and I. I was about to have a new sister and he was becoming a dad again. And all we could do is talk and think about it non-stop for the whole time. Was it going to be a girl or a boy? What was going to be its name? And on and on. I’m pretty sure I would’ve driven my father crazy at the time.

Later when I was a teen I had some pretty outrageous parties up here, all good times, except that once when we ran out of cigarettes and someone was forced to go on 6 hour round trip to get more. But even that was funny. A bunch of teens with nicotine-withdrawal induced cabin fever.

Anyway, I’ve been fantasizing about being up here again for a long time, both to do some work and to just take in the silence. Some of the romance has gone as the four-hundred year old cabin collapsed a little while ago. In it’s place stands what is pretty much a modern house with electricity and running water (except for the winter, when due to the danger of the pipes freezing the water can’t be turned on).
But still, the place remains the same, it’s one of quiet and stunning beauty, irrelevant of whether the building that stands upon it is 6 or four-hundred years old. I have no idea whether any of the jams I’ve made up here so far are any good. But it’s largely secondary. I’ve had a very great time making it. Whether its shit or not, I really don’t care.

So now you got a little bit of the story. The place means a lot to me for a whole bunch of reasons, too many to list, in fact. But of course it’s an especially important locale, as I was conceived here. (that’s a joke btw)

And this is where I am, awaiting my third full moon. I’m a pretty selfish human and I look forward to again having this moment all to myself, but sometimes, and for some reason especially today, I wished all my loved ones could be here to take it all in with me. I think you’d like it.

Thanks for reading,

Love,
Heinz

(like I said, I haven’t slept for a while, so please excuse the bad grammar/spelling, rubbish punctuation, the overtly naive and saccharine nature of the writing as well as all the other shortcomings of this ramble; cheers!)

Kenny?