18. WALKING THROUGH WOODS AND CLOUDS

Right here, at Ra Stua, in front of the Crepe de Socroda and the Croda d’Ancona, Mario Rigoni Stern (1921–2008) spoke in public for the last time away from his hometown of Asiago. It was August 2007. He shared stories of mountains, forests, pastures, and of a nature that must be preserved for the future, if this planet wants to have a future. His favorite tree, he confided, was the larch, which in autumn, when the mountains fall silent again, gilds the slopes, strong and resilient to winds and weather, anchored to the earth by deep roots. In many ways, he identified with the larch, having in his long life overcome all sorts of hardships: on the alpine peaks, on three war fronts, in prison camps, while writing unforgettable works like The Sergeant in the Snow, Il bosco degli urogalli, and Arboreto Salvatico. These mountains were also a setting and inspiration for writer Erri De Luca, especially in Tre cavalli (1999). For Giovanni Cenacchi (1963–2006), mountaineer, explorer, and writer, the plateaus of Ra Stua and Sennes, Fodara Vedla and Lerosa, the meadows of Lake Foses, were the embodiment of a mountain life without the risks of great heights— which he nevertheless loved and visited regularly, taking long walks among the meadows and stone pines, through wind and silence, with smiling melancholy and a desperate desire to live. Cenacchi proposed a kind of “final exploratory gamble”: to seek stories “at the center of our continent, which is an island, but not an island in the sea. It is an island of mountains that we call the Alps, furrowed on all sides by deep valleys through which most of our water flows. This is the center, this is the right place from which to begin our escape.”