Deep Into Inner (and Original) Switzerland

sdkkslkklsmfls — Near the Klausenpass (photo by my wife)

We headed out this morning along the northern shore of the Brienzersee (through Ringgenberg, which was probably my most important tracting area in the Berner Oberland and perhaps altogether in my mission, and where I had a remarkable set of unexpected experiences with the local Protestant pastor), back over the Brünigpass to Altdorf and over the spectacular Klausenpass. When we reached Linthal, on the other side of the Pass over in Kanton Glarus, we turned around and retraced our journey, seeing everything in literally different light and from a different direction. The scenery is magnificent all along the way. In the evening, we enjoyed a cheese fondue in an outdoor garden area near Interlaken, not far from the shores of the Thunersee — fondue was one of my must-eats during this visit (as it always is) — followed by a chocolate fondue dessert. All while enjoying a gentle breeze and admiring the Mönch and the Jungfrau. (The Eiger wasn’t quite visible from where we were sitting.) I tried to be miserable for the sake of my fan club over at the Peterson Obsession Board, but I couldn’t quite pull it off.

The apple bearer, with William Tell. — A famous statue of Wilhelm Tell and his son. It stands in Altdorf, at the western end of the road that climbs up and over the Klausenpass. Tradition makes Wilhelm Tell something of a local boy. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image). It is in the spirit of Wilhelm Tell and his struggle for freedom and independence that I wish everybody out there a happy Juneteenth tomorrow!

In the 2 June 2024 Come, Follow Me segment of the Interpreter Radio Show, the program hosts Martin Tanner, Brent Schmidt, Hales Swift, and Spencer Kraus discussed Book of Mormon lesson 26, “Enter into the Rest of the Lord,” which covers Alma 13-16.

It was recorded, and it has now been freed of commercial and other interruptions, archived, and made available for your enjoyment at your convenience. The other segments of the 2 June 2024 radio show can be accessed at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-june-2-2024.

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard live in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake on Sunday evenings — every single week of the year from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or, if that doesn’t work for you, you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.

Still in the Urschwyz. — Dscending from the Klausenpass, from Kanton Glarus toward Kanton Uri. Photograph by my wife.

Also just up on the Interpreter website — which, as we all now, is slowly dying and scarcely ever shows even minimal signs of life — is this: Nibley Lectures: Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon Lesson 26: “Enter into the Rest of the Lord”: Alma 13-16

This week for Come, Follow Me lesson 26 covering Alma 13-16, we have lectures 49 and 50 from Hugh Nibley’s Book of Mormon classes at Brigham Young University, covering Alma 12-17.

During 1988, 1989, and 1990, Hugh Nibley taught Honors Book of Mormon classes for four semesters at Brigham Young University. The lectures were video-taped and audio cassettes and printed transcripts were made of the lectures. We believe these recordings will be interesting to listen to and valuable to your Come, Follow Me study program this year. Each week, we will include the lectures covering the Book of Mormon chapters being studied that week.

In the vicinity of the Klausenpass. — A photo taken by my wife near the beginning of the road from Altdorf up to the Klausenpass

And there’s this, too, which has now gone up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Come, Follow Me — Study and Teaching Helps (2024): Lesson 26, June 24-30: Alma 13-16 “Enter into the Rest of the Lord”

Editor’s Note: Four years ago, Jonn Claybaugh began writing the Study and Teaching Helps series of articles for Interpreter. We now have these wonderful and useful posts for all four years of Come, Follow Me lessons. Beginning this year we will be reposting these articles, with dates, lesson numbers, and titles updated for the current year’s lessons. Jonn has graciously agreed to write new study aids for those lessons that do not directly correspond to 2020 lessons.

We drove along it this evening. — The Brienzersee (Lake Brienz) from atop Schynnige Platte in the Berner Oberland (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

Iseltwald Dorf — The village of Iseltwald, as seen from out on the water. Back when I was about twenty, my companion and I tracted out every cottage — there weren’t many — in this then-isolated little village on the Brienzersee. Whereby hangs a tale that I should probably not publicly share.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Incidentally, Wilhelm (or William) Tell was a very popular subject in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as a symbol for rebellion against tyranny. It was the period of the French and American revolutions, after all. I offer two examples:

The first is Gioachino Rossini’s famous 1829 finale to his William Tell Overture. Give it a listen here. (It’s just slightly more than two minutes long.) Unfortunately, of course, at least for people of my rapidly disappearing generation, it became associated first and foremost with the Lone Ranger and his weekly television show.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe learned of the Wilhelm Tell legend while traveling in Switzerland in the 1770s, and thought to write a play about Tell. But he decided to pass the idea on instead to his friend Friedrich von Schiller, whose play Wilhelm Tell premiered in Weimar in 1804. It has been presented fairly regularly in the summer here in Matten, within walking distance of where I’m typing. I’ve seen it here at least three times. (This year, oddly, it’s been replaced — one time only, they say — by a play entitled Robin Hood., which we wanted to see but which will next be performed just after we need to leave.) It’s also been performed annually in Altdorf; we saw posters for it this afternoon. Altdorf is the place, according to the story, where occurred the famous story of the hat on a pole, the crossbow, the apple, and the boy.

Above Sarnen. — If we’re living in a simulation, it’s sometimes a rather pretty one. My wife took this photo along the road between Luzern and Interlaken several years ago — somewhere around Lungern, I believe. Not too far below the Brünigpass. Unfortunately, her cell phone didn’t really pick up the unearthly blue of the little lake. We stopped at the same spot today and — hope springs eternal — used a new cell phone to take yet another set of inevitably disappointing photos.

There was, I confess, a degree of melancholy about today’s journey. We took my brother and my sister in law over the Klausenpass on two separate visits to Switzerland. And, during each visit, we also stopped at the viewpoint represented in the photograph immediately above. My brother passed away in 2012. My sister in law is now gone, as well. I cannot visit these places, I cannot see these sights, without thinking of them, without remembering the times that we spent with them. It took too many years, but I was finally able to share my beloved Switzerland with my beloved brother. I’m glad, at least, that I had that opportunity — and that he enjoyed it so very much that we did it yet again. I wish he were here with us now.

Posted from Matten bei Interlaken, Switzerland