There is a fair amount of research* that supports the idea that getting outside, moving one’s body, and being in nature is healthy and this concept is seen throughout the literature: “contact with nature can be beneficial, for example leading to improvements in mood, cognition, and health….and being connected to nature and feeling happy are, in fact, connected.”
I took a day off yesterday to travel 3:05 from Geneva to Embd. 3 hours on a few trains, then 5 minutes up the gondola, then an hour walk up 300m of elevation to got to the Yak Tsang Ling yak farm. I got a quick tour and some postcards and yak salami from Daniel Wismer who owns and runs the Yak Farm.
As I am undergoing chemo, I was wearing a mask, gloves and repeating application of hand sanitiser, to guard my immunity while I spent most of the day on the train (people here need to learn to cover their mouths and noses and use tissues when coughing and sneezing and touching the train buttons, argh!).
I needed to get out to the fresh mountain air, and Embd, Switzerland is at an elevation of 1400m (4400 feet give or take). Living in Geneva, we have a lot of parks, certainly, and thankfully getting out to nature is less than an hour in most directions, really.
In my MSc, I studied the links between mental well-being, flood risk awareness, and health. So I did a lot of reading on the topics of health and green spaces as well as blue spaces (by water bodies). I have always felt better when I am outdoors, near a beach or in the mountains or in a forest walking.
So I took a mental health day and went on this little adventure.
The Yak Tsang Ling yak farm (http://www.yaks.ch) is at 1650m, and the hike in the cool mountain air with the views was just what I needed to counteract some of the anxiety I have had lately with the breast cancer treatments.
On my hike and at the farm I encountered: 3 very friendly cats, including the yak farm cat, an ant in the snow (? odd), crows, jays, song birds, an albino peacock, peahens, doves, and tracks of chamois and other small critters.
The tracks in the snow, while interesting, I could not identify them, and the pics were not great. So I will include the ant photo. He seemed very cold as he was moving very slow.
There was a stunning albino peacock. I have never seen yaks in real life nor an albino peacock.
The Yak Farm has a video up on YouTube:
This video is from Sonja Wismer and her hike with 3 yaks from Embd to Menton, France on the Mediterranean coast:
It took my quite a while to hike, and in the end I spent 4 hours walking around up in the mountains and thru the village. Like every village and town and city in Switzerland (it seems) there was construction happening. The streets of Embd were newly paved and cobbled and the train station of Kalpetran was under a lot of work.
There are quite a few traditional houses, still in Embd, too, check out the foundations on these:
I have seen this style in Belalp and Zermatt but I do not know what it is called and can do some more research on this.
In any case it was worth the physical exhaustion and anxiety to go for this hike — and as I am reading about anxiety in a mindfulness book, it was a good test to look at how I reacted. A good day out overall.
Visit the Yak Tsang Ling Farm website: www.yaks.ch and check out some of the photos on Daniel’s site. They have a small shop too that sells postcards and t shirts etc, as well as a map of all the international visitors (some from Honolulu recently!). I bought 20 post cars (these will be my holiday cards this year to family and friends).
I was really refreshed being outside and seeing the yaks and the other animals. :)
*Some research links — there are a lot more out there tho that are reproduce-able, well cited and of interest. :)