So here we are on this epic trip sort of retracing our steps from 19 years ago. The first couple of days have been different than last time, but also mostly the same. We started at the same hotel, but it expanded and I didn’t even realize it was the same place until we visited the kids’ room and walked into the original part of the hotel. Then we hiked to Guarda, but on a slightly different route.
Last time we spent one night in Guarda, this time around we are spending two. Today instead of hiking to Zuoz, we did a day hike to a mountain hut for a glorious lunch. When we returned to town, we showered up and went off to explore town a bit before dinner.
19 years ago when in Guarda we explored and came across a ceramic artist who made goats. I fell in love with the goats, but figured I would see them at some other point during our hiking trip. We hiked and hiked and visited little town after quaint village, but no goats! At the end of the trip I convinced Jamie that we needed to get back to Guarda and get those goats.
After several train rides we arrived and purchase two goats. And 19 years later those two goats are my most prized possession. They don’t look like most anything else I own or like, but I just love them. I have shed tears over those goats.
We weren’t sure which town we had purchased the goats from, but Jamie had been reading his blog posts from that trip and thought it might be in Guarda. I had also named the goats Guarda and Zuoz so it seemed likely that they were from one of the two towns. But when we got to Guarda the train station was a 10 minute bus ride from the village and neither one of us remembered hiking to the town or taking a bus to the town. So that was sorta that. No goats in Guarda. But then one of travel companions, Theresa, noticed a sign in town that listed an art gallery that sold ceramics and pointed it out to us. So back to today…when we went to check out the town, we stopped by the sign, noted the address, found the address and found the goats!!!
Now we have two more goats in the family, one for Mazie and one for Tyler. They have been instructed that these goats are now their most prized possessions and to someday, perhaps 19 years in the future, return to Guarda and purchase a goat for each of their children.
The goats in the store looked a little different than the ones Jamie and I bought all those years ago, so I asked the woman in the store and she said that the daughter now made the goats, but the goats from 19 years ago were made by the mother. How cool is that? Our goats had children and we had children and now our children each have one of the goat children. Maybe in 19 years, the daughter will have a daughter and she will make the goats. Sometimes life is just the coolest 😀🐐
