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National Geographic : 1960 Aug
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National Geographic, August, 1960 pled through the score. It was rather gay. The moon came up, a high-prowed skiff made for the far shore, and an echo of the chief refrain floated back to us from the cheery paddlers. By day St. Wolfgang tends to be thronged with sightseers who have come not only to hoist a few glasses on lakeside terraces and to chug up the Schafberg on the rack-and-pinion railway, but also to admire the fabulous cembra-pine altarpiece by Michael Pacher in the pilgrim church (page 267). This Gothic masterpiece of 1471-81 is stamped with such authority that it survived the wholesale house cleaning that marked the baroque period in Austria, when nearly every vestige of the medieval was swept aside or disguised as "old hat." Its gilt and pigment have been rubbed into the wood so deftly that, in the words of one visitor, they are "like the memory of color once seen." Solitude Lies on the Eisenaueralm Earnest and devout, the tourists gather like bees before Pacher's work. But it is possible to escape their hum. In fact, one of the pleas antest aspects of the Salzkammergut is the ease with which one can achieve solitude. Photographer Kurt Wentzel and I found it one afternoon by the simple device of climb ing a mountain. Leaving the Wolfgangsee, we pushed up a lumber road to the Schwarzensee. A dark stand of timber led off to the right, and we followed it along a steep ridge for several miles. The road dwindled to a trail, climbed beside a black icy brook, and then emerged into an upland meadow-the Eisenaueralm. Above us reared the grayish massif of the Schafberg, seen from its eastern face. On the meadow itself were scattered three low-roofed huts, embedded in the boulder-strewn pasture as if they had grown from it. A herd of dun cows, as wraithlike as deer, grazed under the firs, their bells calling to one another in tones of thin beaten silver. We walked over to the farthest chalet, a rough-and-ready inn, and ordered cheese and ale, sitting in the late sunshine that slanted over the mountain wall. On the whole plateau nothing moved but, almost imperceptibly, the cows. There was, in fact, little up here to take in except peace. But there was a lot of that. The hutkeeper, a stout fellow with a Chap linesque mustache, turned out to have been burgomaster of St. Gilgen under the American occupation forces.* "We got along fine," he said ponderously. "Ja. A very pleasant relationship." The sun dipped behind the Schafberg, and a sudden chill ran across the valley. "Much game up here?" I asked. "Plenty of deer. Chamois, too, and stags. Even eagles. So many eagles, in fact, that we can shoot them freely. With rifles, you under stand, not shotguns. More sporting." An hour or so later we retraced our way through the meadow and down the trail, keeping an eye out for eagles and, for that matter, unicorns. In such dark and magical woods, we felt, a unicorn would seem no more out of place than a squirrel. While not many visitors have had very good luck with unicorns, the villagers around Mond see are quite proud of their dragon. Over the lake looms a monstrous twin-toothed crag called the Drachenwand, and it is on this cliff that Austria's last dragon, they say, once had his lair. The two red dots glowing from the peak after dark are the twin crags caught by the sun's dying rays; but to me they were the eyes of the watchful dragon, alert till dawn against the coming of another Siegfried. The origin of Mondsee's name is obscured by legend. Six miles long and a mile wide, the lake offers the warmest swimming of any in the Salzkammergut, and on a sunny day its fringes are dotted with Austrians, face up, floating on rafts, rubber tubes, or their own buoyant avoirdupois. Farther out, sailboats scud swiftly along before the uncertain Al pine gusts. "Let Him Carve Himself a Wife" Kurt and I wandered into the town of Mondsee one Sunday morning as the local band was parading-oom-pah! oom-pah! along the waterfront, followed by a delighted taggle of small boys, dachshunds, and nurse maids. The red-and-white banners of Austria fluttered in the breeze. Steam launches dis gorged holidaymakers from across the lake. Families sat in shirt-sleeved ease in the garden cafes and smiled at the passing show. We found a milk bar adjoining a little fac tory and settled down. The factory made Mondsee cheese, an especially soft and creamy * For earlier accounts of a nation's postwar rebirth, see "Building a New Austria," also by Mr. Bowie, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, February, 1959; and "Occu pied Austria, Outpost of Democracy," by George W. Long, June, 1951. 254
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