After an hours ride on the paved highway, Pete and I turned off at a dirt path leading into a side canyon. We walked our bicycles along the fairly level path.
The surrounding jagged mountains and forest were as beautiful and pristine as you could want in this picturesque country and before long we arrived at an antique village of perhaps ten cottages and a chapel of the typically Swiss alpine construction.
Perhaps forty men, women and children presently lived in this village but they were not the original residents. Since it was not on the highway and only reachable by footpath, the village had been abandoned for years but had been bought entire lately by a small religious community.
These current residents were some folks who had decided to band together and live apart from the hustle and bustle of the modern world.
And they had found what seemed to me to be a perfect refuge.
There was no sign on the highway that the community was here. No visitors or tourists were encouraged or expected.
They made no attempt to recruit new residents and they had no propaganda publications extolling their unusual village or way of life.
They were just here.
They were friendly and welcoming to me, I think, because I came with Pete, who spoke Swiss-Deutsch, knew everybody and was, it seemed, everybody's friend.
I felt very fortunate to visit this modern Swiss Shangri-La
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