The steep one-lane road we ascended ran in switchbacks past several of the characteristic farmhouses one sees in the high alps. The taxi driver, whose name was Mario, talked about these houses as we drove by them. His German was amazingly clear to me, probably because he was from Ticino and his first language was Italian. The farmhouses, all enormous, were usually attached to even larger barns, and together they housed both the herders and their herds. Dairy farming at such altitudes was hard, Mario said, but they had been doing it for many generations, and had their system perfected. The green alps themselves were creations of the herders-huge lawns, in effect, cleared of their original load of forest and rock. The centuries of labor necessary to achieve that kind of a transformation was mind-boggling to contemplate. We agreed that it was part of what made the Alps feel strange-both safe and dangerous, domestic and wild-a pretty park that in half an hour could turn nasty and kill you. I mentioned Muir’s famous description of California’s Sierra Nevada, as gentle wilderness; we agreed that the Swiss Alps could well be called savage civilization.

Passing one of the big barns, I mentioned that I had once hiked by one just as it was being opened up for the spring, and how struck I had been by the sight of the astonished new calves staggering in the sunlight . Mario laughed and said that was one of his favorite sights of spring. They see the sky! he said. For the first time they see the sky, and it blows their mind!

At these altitudes, Mario went on, dairy farming was unprofitable. The government subsidized it, paying more the higher the farm. But it wasn’t enough to keep the young people at home. The houses had been built to hold extended families of three or four generations; now they were mostly empty, kept going by husband-and-wife teams and maybe a couple of kids. The homes had become like millionaire’s mansions, much too large for their occupants. People thought that would be great, but it wasn’t so. It would be sad.