More than years after Asheville literary giant Thomas Wolfe gave us this immortal expression, his words echo with the love and longing that a place gives us. But what about returning to a place that never was your home, a place that somehow adopts you, welcomes you back as if it were your home? If there is such a place for me, it is Switzerland. The mountains there may be snow-capped like the Rockies out West, but the rolling verdant hills and forests remind me of an unspoiled Western North Carolina — minus the haze, billboards and sprawl of box stores.

Taking the “wanderweg” (hiking trail) on a ridgeline overlooking the lake, we could see the snows beginning to melt, making for some slushy hiking. White and purple crocuses bloomed along our path and Crayola green slopes served as pasture for cattle and sheep. Plots of farmland and neatly terraced properties made a patchwork of the landscape fields. Not a single house perched atop the mountains to spoil the view. Down below was the Vierwaldstättersee, or Lake Lucerne. Rising from the lake and into the distant horizon were the Alps — forests of black and green giving way to snow-capped rocky giants in the horizon.

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