"Imagine if I had to search for the words among eighty-six billion neurons! I had to do that once when I went into a catatonic fugue state while defending my dissertation to a jury of stern professors, and once when I was on some really bad acid, and, believe me, it's not how you get a reputation for being articulate. So they (the neurons) got together and decided that high ground in a rich, neutral country is the best place to set a summit meeting."
"They weren't the first to come to that conclusion! Moreover-I must thank my friend Ian Christe, the great Swiss American heavy-metal critic, for both these points-Switzerland is so beautiful that there's a subreddit devoted to exposing it as computer-generated art ("SwitzerlandIsFake"), and yet on every single hiking trail, no matter how harmless it looks on the map, there comes a moment when one wonders whether one is about to die."
Two women who have been friends for two decades, living in the same small Bavarian town, take a walk along the peak of Mt. Niesen in the Swiss Alps. The women differ sharply in background and personality: Julia is American, more rigid and less carefree; Vroni is German and more open. The high, neutral Swiss peak amplifies tensions and becomes the setting where differences escalate. Creativity is described as arriving unbidden, likened to neuronal coordination during a catatonic fugue and a bad acid trip. Switzerland's extraordinary beauty is noted alongside the sudden, visceral peril hikers sometimes feel.
Read at The New Yorker
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