The year-round hiking season

When planning on going to the US back in 2007, there was, at one point relatively late in the process, a choice between three locations, one of which was Tucson. It had made the list of about 6 or so places to consider for grad school somewhat haphazardly, and only when the choice had boiled down to three did it receive more attention. As always with decisions that you know will shape the rest of your life but are too big to grasp every aspect and potential consequence of, there were intimidatingly many factors to consider about the three places. But one thing stands out in my memory, that made Tucson a whole lot more attractive than it had looked at first glance: a 12 month hiking season.

In lieu of wordy descriptions, some pictures:

Tucson Mountains, January

Cochise Stronghold, February

Babad Doag Trail, March

Mt. Kimball, April

Mt. Wrightson, May

Mt. Lemmon, June

Chiricahua, July

Wilderness of Rocks, August

Hope Camp Trail, September

Aravaipa Canyon, October

Pinaleno Mountains, November

Pima Canyon, December

  
Oh, what a wonderful luxury that was: any odd weekend, we'd pick a place, go to the Map and Flag Center, buy the respective USGS map, gather the equipment, food and water, and off we went! In contrast, I distinctly remember talking to my mother on the phone before one of my visits back to Austria, about going for a hike during the three or four days I was going to be in Admont, and she said: "We'll see once we know about the weather." The what?

Don't get me wrong, I do not need balmy weather and Arizona-type sunshine to go hiking. I come from a family with a long tradition of roaming the great outdoors in all kinds of conditions. Walking through a soaking wet, green forest can be a great experience. But...*sigh*....it is just so much easier to plan a hike for any given weekend, when you know that the chance of an all-day rainstorm is about 1 in 730. When you know that there will be a dry place to sit, you will not get stuck in snow or mud, if it rains, you might get wet, but not miserably cold, and there is just not enough water in the air to create the kind of weather that will make you return having seen absolutely nothing of the landscape because the visibility was as far as the next 5 steps. 

Ok, nothing is perfect, and to be absolutely precise, Tucson has a 7-month prime hiking season and a 5-month secondary hiking season in which you have to plan a tiny bit more - for a somewhat longer drive (up one of the sky islands to escape the oven that the low desert has become) or to get up ridiculously early (ideally to reach the turn-around point of your hike at about sunrise, in the hottest time of the year). Both of these can feel like obstacles when sitting in an air-conditioned house in Tucson at the end of May. But in retrospect, now that I am sitting in a heated apartment in Vienna at the end of May, heading into another rainy, windy, 12-degree Celsius kind of weekend, I am realizing that these things were minor inconveniences at best.

Small changes

Things change in 5 years, to state the blatantly obvious. This one is about small things that are not necessarily very important, but that I notice anyway, simply because I've been away for long enough that I see them as a step function rather than a gradual process. So, here's a small collection of little things that changed: 

1. There's this orange stuff called Aperol that everyone seems to be drinking now. I have no idea where it came from and who decided it was THE summer thing on every drink menu, but here it is. I guess eventually I'll have to try it. 

2. Everyone and their grandmother seems to be wearing Jack Wolfskin. It seems to be a little like Eddie Bauer in the US: an outdoor outfitter with a large clientele of people who may want to look a little more outdoors-y than they actually are. It has become a real high street store, so much so that I found myself explaining my old Jack Wolfskin washbag to my husband ("That brand is so popular I'll never wear it"): "when I got that thing 15 years ago, the company was a normal outfitter like all the others..."

3. It is now relatively easy to get your hands on ripe avocados. In 2007, guacamole meant planning ahead for a week; last week, I ended up with moldy avocados instead of guacamole.

4. Commissions for real estate agents (all but a tiny fraction of rentals are in their hands) have decreased from 3 months rent to 2 months rent, continuing a very pleasing trend in legislation which is saving Vienna from becoming a landlord's free-for-all like London or San Francisco.
5. Vienna is a lot more bike-friendly than I remember it.
6. Noodlekebap and Bubble Tea

7. Demmer's Teehaus seems to have a good business model going with the Viennese cafes and restaurants, making ordering tea anywhere a whole lot less risky than it used to be. (You never knew when you'd pay 2.50 Euros for a 0.25 liter cup filled with 0.2 liters of lukewarm water, a sad, low-grade tea bag and a limp, half dried-up lemon wedge on the side.)

But here is one that I think is most remarkable: 8. Somehow, it seems that "Hallo" has turned into a generic greeting for anyone in almost any situation. Why is this remarkable? Well, because that is a true change in language use over the years I was away. In my books, "Hallo" was an informal greeting, for people you are on first-name terms with. For those English speakers who don't know it: formal vs. informal language in German is something that runs like a thread through the grammatical structure of, oh, about every third or so sentence in a conversation, and it certainly reflects in the way you greet someone. Or so I thought. The first couple times after my return someone greeted me with a "Hallo", I felt either flattered ("I must be looking young...") or slightly weirded out ("Am I supposed to know this person?"). Until someone said "Hallo" and then continued talking to me in the formal language, leaving me completely confused. Then I started noticing it between other people, and it slowly dawned on me that "Hallo" no longer implied familiar terms. 

I am wondering why that happened. Here are my hypotheses: a) People don't want to commit to either formal or informal at first glance in a conversation and are trying to "ease in". This would make sense, generally speaking, since the use of informal language seems to be spreading (Co-workers? Playing orchestra together? Looking reasonably young and buying hiking boots? Ditch the "Sie".) and the use of formal language seems on the retreat. b) People do not like "Grüß Gott" anymore (too pious?), are resisting "Guten Tag" (too German?), and "Hallo" is the somewhat clumsy compromise. c) It's a generic greeting in Germany (is it? I don't know...) and since Germans are the biggest group of immigrants in Austria, this is gaining a foothold. But whatever the reason, I am quite intrigued that within 5 years, there has been an actual change in language use.

Spring

Two amazing things have happened since I last posted: 1. I've got my husband back, 2. The city has turned from a drab pile of stone with a lid of fog into a lively bustling place with lots of green.

It happened at a breathtaking speed. 6 Weeks ago, it was Easter, and it was essentially winter. I probably should have written a nice blog entry about the festivities and the customs and the foods, (and probably also how I used to host a non-denominational Easter breakfast in Tucson for my friends). But in all honesty: it wasn't the best Easter I've ever seen. Sure, there were nice things, such as spending some good times with my mother. But I missed Steve, it felt wrong not to have him around. And on Easter Saturday at night, usually the time of a first brave attempt of sitting in the yard, in the warmth of a smaller or larger bonfire, the view from the front porch was this:

Yes, those are snowflakes. Thick, slow-falling, the Christmas kind. The next day, on the mandatory Easter Sunday walk (which really should be about snowdrops and crocuses on the first swampy, defrosting meadows), I had a late shot at some Alpine winter postcard scenery.

 

April 1, 2013, no joke.

Mexican poppies, the quintessential Arizona spring flower.

Now, of course it's not like I didn't know this kind of stuff. Plenty of Admont winters I remember ended sometime in mid- to late April. But intellectual knowledge is only one kind of knowledge. After 5 years of sunshine, I had no more feel for what was supposed to be happening. People around me were getting impatient, telling me all about how spring was supposed to be here by now, but as far as I was concerned, this was simply eternal winter. (Just like in Tucson, in mid-October of 2007, I had no concept of it being "fall", because I had no feel for how the seasons worked there, and as far as I was concerned, it was simply eternal summer.) Not that I liked the eternal winter, it sucked, but so did not having my husband with me. The idea of being married felt just as abstract as the idea that all those sad trees would suddenly, miraculously, start to grow leaves. Staring out any window, into the snow, it felt like the wedding was ages ago and spring ages away. And even farther away, there was a Tucson spring going on which used to be the reality for me, full of spring flowers, canyons flowing with meltwater, nesting white-winged doves and blissfully mild temperatures. Prime hiking season. It felt so depressingly far away that I tried not to think too much about it. Every once in a while, I'd get my heart broken by glorious spring hiking pictures and photos of golden Mexican poppies somewhere on the social networks. But for the most part, I resigned myself to winter and focused on work.

Southern Arizona spring: a field of Mexican poppies on the slopes of Picacho peak.

And then, all of a sudden, the whole thing was over. Within a week, everything turned around. On April 8, after a week of serious snowfall, the sun came out. Within just a couple of days, the snow was gone. And suddenly, on April 14, it was summer. As in, short sleeve T-shirt weather. A day later, Steve came back. On April 21, we took a hike through blooming trees with tender green leaves, over green meadows and forest floors full of wild garlic.  

Spring in Lainzer Tiergarten

And now? Green everywhere. Big leaves. High grass. Blooming chestnut trees. Fragrant lilacs. Lunches, dinners and beers outside. People lounging on the grass in parks. My first light sunburn. All within a couple of weeks. And: waking up and going to sleep with my husband, every day. It all feels perfectly normal. However, it is not normal, but great. Between Steve's return and spring, life has improved by about 300%.