The walking path

Walk slowly, at a cadenced pace if the climb is steep. Accelerate where the terrain requires less care, where you can push your stick without too much effort into the earth that goes from dry to covered with stones to under a cloak of leaves. Peeking into the humus, here there’s a twig poking out, there there’s a menacing hornet flying past, further on there are a variety of blooms and it's like a painting. Looking up to the immense blue sky. And then–you've barely taken twenty steps and you're breathing is still controlled–the scenario becomes different from what you had observed just a few meters before. Unexpected, unseen, the summit shows another face, the rocky outcrop is sharp whereas before it had seemed round, the view downstream reveals a clearing impossible to imagine, a huddle of houses, a bend in a river, a little cove edged with blue and green.

For forty years, the mountains have been my summer; solitary trails, leaving the crazy August crowds behind. The cool forest, the sun-beaten mule track, the water bottle emptied to the last drop, then the bench in the hut. Finally, the finish line: the summit. The body sore, from the thighs to the toes of my boots, and–above all–my spirit restored.

Hiking is an increasingly popular preference. The lockdown favored the option of secluded countryside.  The number of “followers” is rising, up by twenty or thirty percent. Today, it is encouraged by the striking and suggestive scenes in The Eight Mountains, a film based on the Strega Prize-winning novel by Paolo Cognetti and winner at Cannes and also at the David di Donatello awards.

Hiking is an increasingly popular preference. The lockdown favored the option of secluded countryside

Whether pilgrimage routes or secular trails, hiking is good for the body and the mind. It teaches you to listen, outside and inside. This is what counts: this intimacy experienced precisely while we are outdoors, as they say now, disdainfully rejecting the term “in the open air,” which expands the lungs just by saying it.

The album of snapshots in my memory flips through incorruptible images. Alpe di Siusi, the green plateau of alpine pastures where the paths are snow-white ribs overlooked on the horizon by the peaks of the Dolomites. The Rosszähne/Denti diTerrarossa, the Langkofel/Sassolungo, the Plattkofel/Sassopiatto, the Schlerngruppe/Sciliar. Setting off. The destination, looking at it from afar as it comes into view around a bend, appears unlikely. Unlikely that the impassable gorge, sharp blades of mountain, could be hiding the fully-equipped bivouac with bedrooms and South Tyrolean delicacies. The Demetz Refuge, 2,685 meters, was apparently placed there, in the Forcella del Sassolungo, by a god with long arms and delicate hands (the other spur is called Cinque Dita, or Five Fingers).

The Matterhorn is a mystery because of that horn at the top (in Aosta Valley patois it is called Gran Becca–Big Pinnacle) that seems to bow on the Italian side and changes perspective on the Swiss side. The sun, a cloud, noon, sunset take turns on the ridges; new dihedrals appear with each change of light and angle. The pyramid commands respect. For undemanding hikers, Rifugio Teodulo, 3,317 meters, is a distant but doable destination. Especially charming for its position on the border with Switzerland, there where the Italian Cervino becomes the German Matterhorn and the town is the glamorous Zermatt. In August, you can still see the white of the glacier. The roof and walls of the shelter are now in sight, twenty minutes’ walk at most, but you walk cautiously, fearing crevasses. The full sun hits you on the terrace with the wooden tables, and inside, in the glass-fronted lounge, as you sip a glass of wine, the view includes the Grandes Murailles mountain chain

Central Italy and the south offer mountains on a human scale, where the vertigo is feasible. And yet your interest is tweaked by the constant presence of a genius loci, which perhaps supplants the tourist organization of the North. On sheep-tracks, steep scree slopes, natural balconies protected by ropes, there appear saints and peasants, medieval ruins and farmhouses, legends and village quarrels. Such as on the majestic Maiella. In a narrow passage in the Blockhaus–kids have to be held by the hand and you hold on to a rope–a shepherd popped out of a hollow in the rock, and he was holding out a caciotta cheese to us, to sell, brought up there, presumably with a few other cheeses, from who knows where.

Central Italy and the south donate mountains on a human scale, where vertigo is controlled

In the Simbruini Mountains, between Cervara and Subiaco, halfway up the mountainside, lie the remains of the monastery named after St Chelidonia.  The ascent begins in Vignola. Shaded by holm oaks, oaks and pines. Tufts of wild sage and oregano along the path. You get glimpses of Aniene Valley, occasionally branches framing the Rocca di Subiaco. Then a final climb, accompanied by a procession of cypress trees. The destination is mighty ruins: pointed arches, stumps of rough stone spurs. And a small church, protected by the mountain rock.