Each story is rooted in real local history and landmarks
A child touches the quartzite wall of the Therme Vals and hears the mountain's memories: the ancient sea where the stone formed millions of years ago, the Walser builders who first used it for their houses, the quarry workers who cut it free, and finally Peter Zumthor laying the first slab. Each of the 60,000 stones has a story, and the mountain wants them all told.
A child joins the legendary Valser Saumtreiber on a winter journey over the Valserberg pass, carrying salt and cheese through snowstorms to the distant markets of Bellinzona. Along the treacherous route, the porters share stories of the isolated valley, where every household depended on these brave men to cross the mountains before the road to Ilanz changed everything in 1880.
A child follows a trickle of warm water from the Therme's Drinking Stone back through the mountain, discovering an underground world where the water has journeyed for a hundred years through layers of ancient rock. From raindrop on a distant peak to warm spring at 30 degrees, the child traces the water's century-long path and learns why the mountain gives this gift to the valley.
At the Zervreilasee, the water level drops in autumn and a child glimpses the drowned village of Zervreila below the surface. Diving into the turquoise water, the child hears the stories of the families who once lived there -- and learns how the valley chose to sacrifice one village to build a future, just years after the devastating 1951 avalanche had nearly destroyed Vals itself.
A child finds the ancient Lawinechronik, kept in the church since 1598, and travels through its pages: witnessing the great flood of 1868 that nearly drove the village to emigrate to America, the terrible Winter of Terror in 1951 when a 300-metre avalanche killed 19 people including 14 children, and the decades of reforestation that finally taught the valley to live with its mountain.
Peter Zumthor cannot find the right design for the thermal baths. A child from Vals shows him how the quartzite layers in the mountainside already contain the answer -- the building is already inside the stone, waiting to be uncovered. Together they imagine a structure that grows from the mountain itself, half-buried in the hillside, with light filtering through glass gaps like water through rock.
A Walser family leaves the Rhone valley around 1300, crossing high passes with their livestock to discover the remote Vals valley. A child must help them build the first Blockbau house before winter arrives, learning the ancient technique of interlocking logs and raising granaries on mushroom-shaped stone stilts to keep the mice away -- skills that would define this valley for seven hundred years.
A raindrop falls on the mountain above Vals and begins a hundred-year journey through layers of ancient rock, slowly becoming mineral water. When it finally emerges at the St. Petersquelle, it must choose: become a bottle of Valser water seen in restaurants around the world, or flow into the ancient Therme baths where it will warm the skin of travellers who came from far away to find it.
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