Heidi begins going out with Peter and the goats

Heidi begins going out with Peter and the Goats as soon as she reaches life with Alm-Uncle on the mountain. What starts as a child’s delighted escape into the open becomes a sustaining routine: the pasture gives her room to explore, new companions to care about, and a landscape whose changing beauty she learns to read. The contrast with her later confinement in Frankfurt shows how deeply this first mountain life shapes her sense of home.

Arrival and Invitation

The route to the mountain begins at Maienfeld, where a footpath climbs through meadows toward the heights and passes through Dorfli. By the time Heidi arrives with Dete, the steep ascent has already made the mountain a physical experience: the valley falls behind, the path grows wilder, and the air carries the scent of grass and mountain plants. Her first days with Alm-Uncle bring a more intimate encounter with this landscape, close to the hut and its daily rhythms.

The morning after her arrival, Heidi wakes in the loft, where sunlight falls through the round window onto her bed and the heap of hay. At first she cannot remember where she is; Alm-Uncle’s voice outside brings the previous day back to her. Unlike the old woman whose deafness had kept Heidi close indoors, the mountain offers the child the prospect of going outside and seeing what each day brings. She remembers the two goats with particular delight.

Peter is already outside with his flock when Alm-Uncle brings out his own two goats. Heidi is eager to join them on the mountain, but Alm-Uncle first sets a tub of water in the sun and tells her to wash. His playful warning that the sun might laugh at a dirty child turns washing into part of the departure ritual. Only after Heidi has scrubbed herself clean does he let her go.

Discovering the Pasture

Heidi does not simply follow Peter and the Goats in an orderly line. On the way uphill, she runs ahead and veers aside whenever a patch of color catches her eye. Red primroses, blue gentians, and golden cistus draw her into the flowers; she gathers armfuls in her apron, intending to carry them home and make her bedroom look like the meadow. Peter, responsible for keeping the lively animals together, has to watch both the wandering child and the goats. Heidi’s delight makes the first outing less like a lesson in herding than an impulsive exploration that Peter must keep trying to manage.

At the usual resting place, the scenery opens out. The valley lies below in the morning sun; a broad snowfield rises against the dark-blue sky, and bare rocky peaks stand above the flowers and firs. Heidi sits quietly and takes in the scene while Peter, tired from the climb, falls asleep and the goats wander among the bushes. The stillness, fresh air, sunlight, and flower scents make this a defining discovery for her: she feels happier than ever before and wishes she could remain there. The mountains, once seen from far below, now seem to her like familiar companions looking down at her.

The day also brings Heidi into closer relation with the animals. When Peter gathers the goats onto the plateau, she runs among them, meeting them individually and noticing that each has its own way of behaving. Peter lays out bread and cheese in separate portions, larger pieces for Heidi and smaller ones for himself, and milks fresh milk from a white goat into a bowl. Heidi is so caught up in the goats’ play that Peter has to shout to summon her to the meal. Later, she bargains with him: she offers him the milk and a large piece of bread in exchange for a promise not to beat Greenfinch, Snowflake, or any of the goats. Peter accepts, and Greenfinch is released to rejoin the others.

Sunset and a Repeated Routine

As the day ends, the mountain seems to catch fire. Heidi sees red light spread across the rocks, snow, sky, and fir trees and calls Peter’s attention to the spectacle. Peter treats the colors as familiar, but Heidi cannot stop looking from one part of the mountain to another. Back at the hut, she recounts the day to Alm-Uncle and asks him to explain the fiery appearance. He tells her that the setting sun casts its most beautiful colors over the mountains before night, so they will not forget it before the sun returns the next day. Heidi is delighted by the explanation and eagerly anticipates seeing the sunset again.

That night, she sleeps soundly on her bed of hay and dreams of shining mountains covered in red roses, with Snowflake leaping among them. The dream carries the day’s landscape into sleep, joining mountain, flower, and goat in a single image of happiness. It also marks the outing as more than a temporary excursion: the experiences are already becoming the substance of Heidi’s imagination.

The outings then continue day after day. Living among grass and flowers, Heidi becomes brown from the sun and grows strong and healthy. The freedom of the routine is real, but it is not without limits: when autumn winds rise, Alm-Uncle sometimes keeps her at home because a sudden gust could blow a small child over the rocks and into the valley. The mountain is a place of openness and pleasure, yet its steep terrain and weather require caution.

The Mountain as Home

The importance of these first outings becomes clearest after Heidi is taken to Frankfurt. There, she wakes in a high white bed behind long curtains and tries one window after another in search of the country outside. She cannot move the windows, and the view offers walls and more windows rather than green grass, fir trees, or mountain snow. The confinement reverses the open movement of the pasture: where Heidi had been free to run toward each flower or follow the goats uphill, she now presses against barriers and cannot reach the landscape she longs to see.

Weeks pass without a change in the walls and windows. On the rare outings with Clara, the party goes only a short distance because Clara cannot bear prolonged movement; Heidi sees streets, houses, and crowds, but seldom reaches grass or flowers. Her longing grows so strong that words reminding her of home bring her close to tears. When sunlight falls on the opposite walls, she avoids looking at it and remembers instead Peter’s summer pasture, the golden cistus, and the rocks glowing red at sunset. The memory of the first outings supplies the specific images through which homesickness takes shape.

Later, Heidi leads the doctor up the mountain and takes him to the resting place she has loved since her first days with Peter and the Goats. The familiar view is still there: the snowfield sparkles above the valley, bluebells move in the breeze, and the great bird circles overhead. The doctor can see the beauty, but wonders how someone with a sad heart might be healed by it. Heidi protests that no one is sad up there. Her response recalls the happiness she first found on the pasture while also revealing a difference between her immediate attachment to the mountain and the doctor’s question about grief. The place that began as her joyful destination has become, for both of them, a setting in which the possibility of comfort and recovery can be considered.