There’s a line from a Joni Mitchell song that’s been looping in my head lately: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

She wrote it after a trip to Hawaii, where she looked out from her hotel expecting to see paradise and instead saw a parking lot. That moment inspired Big Yellow Taxi, her reminder of how easily we build over beauty in the name of progress.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of that every time I look across a certain field here in Gstaad. For more than thirty years it’s been a familiar sight, cows grazing in summer, children sledding down it in winter, a small piece of the valley that’s always felt unchanged and dependable.

Then, almost overnight, the construction profiles appeared. Four chalets planned, apparently. Large ones. And it made me stop and wonder. Because I thought we weren’t building new second homes here anymore.

Building and balance

Maybe everything is perfectly above board, even though the plans indicate luxurious appartments, sweeping balconies and a sauna. And yes, the building regulations require that new properties be constructed in the traditional alpine style, so they don’t jar against the landscape. But that doesn’t solve the issue of how many there are, or how many cars they bring with them.

Progress isn’t the problem. How we balance it is. Development can bring vitality; more work for local tradespeople and more year-round life for villages. Yet each new project also chips away at what makes this valley unique: the slower pace of life, unspoilt surroundings and the soaring views.

It’s not that growth is unwelcome, far from it. Every community needs movement and renewal to thrive. We’ve all heard of those remote villages that are paying families to set down roots and breathe new life into them. But there’s a difference between healthy evolution and quiet overdevelopment, the kind that creeps up on you one building at a time until the gaps between houses shrink and what once was what I’ll call “green land” feels more hemmed in.

The Saanenland’s appeal has always rested on that restraint. It’s what sets the region apart from larger, sprawling resorts, a place where scale still matters, and open space still counts for something. Those stretches of meadow and pasture between chalets aren’t wasted land; they’re what allow the landscape to breathe.

That’s why the sight of those construction profiles feels unsettling. Not because change is wrong, but because it reveals how easily we take for granted what has always been there. The open fields, the cows, the view that doesn’t need improving.

Seeing what we still have

I don’t think Joni’s lyric was only about nostalgia. It was about awareness, about paying attention before the things that make a place special quietly slip away. Paradise rarely disappears all at once. Sometimes it just changes shape, field by field, while we’re busy calling it progress.

Maybe the challenge is to stay alert, to keep asking whether what’s being built truly serves the community. To remember that every decision, every permit and every new foundation leaves a mark that can’t easily be undone. And perhaps, to actively notice the things that already make life here extraordinary – the peace, the pace, the space – before they fade into the background.

Because, as Joni reminded us, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, and by then the view out the window might never look quite the same again.

ANNA CHARLES