Quarantaine
Today is July 11. I just recovered from Covid. Probably as one of the last persons on this planet, I only got infected about a week ago for the very first time.
It all happened in Italy. It must have been on the day we ascended towards the Three Peaks in the dolomites, towards a beautiful rifugio just over the cliff. On this rainy day, we were soaked when we arrived, cold to the bones.
People do not shape mountains. Mountains shape people. The elements dictate every move you make even when a clear path is shaped ahead of you. Freedom is not so much a physical thing, only a state of mind, projecting the hope to achieve our desires, while putting one foot in front of the other and again, only to reach a destination that was never really a choice.
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The Three Peaks give us blue skies and panoramic views of the lush green valleys below. On the second day of our visit, the rain stops. Hiking the steep and gravelly trails feels like a breeze, I feel like I am pulled up the hill by invisible kites.
The hut were we stay, The Bertihütte, lies more isolated than the previous regions of the dolomites that we visited. The hut is manned by an Italian family, many children of different ages seem to spend the school holidays high in the mountains and help out all the aspects of running this Alpine business. Guests are left to themselves and interaction is set to the bare essential.
We marvel at the plates of food that leave the fully equipped kitchen towards the family table. Guests receive the usual pasta and uneventful dishes, until the second evening, I never ate such a delicious mushroom pasta in my life.
The best moments of a journey are not the moments of wealth and luxury. After you close the door of the familiar and you step in the world where you lose anticipation because you’re in a parallel universe where you rely on your instincts and you find these instincts spread light on what has always been a shadow, there is a moment of unexpected beauty, a moment, that cannot be fabricated, a moment that becomes real in the present and will always live in the past, a memory anchored to a solemn sequence of footsteps.
