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Wednesday, 12 January 2011 And since the body, as everyone knows, goes hand in hand with the mind, the whole thing ended up being splendidly staged on the boards of a grotesque little theatre, carefully improvised in an attempt to win back my passion for the mountains. But the truth is that you cannot will what you want... passions come just like that and go just like that... and at the moment my passion for the mountains has faded considerably. Alessandro suggests a midweek outing. It might be just the thing... but... the little one at home has a new (for the fourth time) bout of flu. Rhinosinusitis, says the paediatrician. OK, I have to give up for the umpteenth time. Then my guardian angel calls me and says: "go ... I'll stay with the little one!". We are on the road at 5, still in the dead of night. It wasn't hard getting up at the usual antediluvian hours; what was harder was finding the motivation to head out again just a few days later. Training, perhaps. Yes! I have to get back into training. You must never stop going walking... and I have been at a standstill for too many months. I find a new inner motivation in the confirmation that the summit I spotted in October 2010 between the Toppe del Tesoro and the Cima dei Tre Confini is indeed a clearly distinct summit and meets all the criteria to be recognised as one. The confirmation also reaches me a few days earlier from Alberto, back from a short holiday in those very mountains. Right then, Alessandro and I will set off in search of this peculiar “nameless” phantom summit which, quite simply, we could also call "Cima Gravare di Sotto", just to match the names on the maps. Again on paper, it would seem that this summit reaches the modest height of 2087 metres; we'll wait and see... Arriving at the Aremogna ski lifts we are full of expectations, but the sky is against us. The clouds are moving fast, but they are also heavy with moisture. The forecast gave fine weather in the centre, getting worse in the southern areas of Abruzzo. And so it was. We know straight away that we will have problems, but we try not to let it get us down. Of the two of us, Alessandro is the more fired up, both in fitness and in morale. We start from the large car park of the "Le Gravare" ski lift. We leave the pistes and the lifts all behind us and straight away pick up the long northern ridge of the massif. It is one long, single steep pull up to 2087 m. The snow is excellent, crunchy and firm, so much so that the crampons bite perfectly. The route is monotonous; around us the weather seems to be improving, then above 1900 m the clouds thicken and it starts snowing. We are almost at the summit; there are no particular risks, and no chance of getting lost either. We reach the summit in about 2 hours and 45 minutes. I am wrecked by tiredness, on top of the tiredness built up and not yet shaken off from two days earlier. In the mist I see the summit ... God forgive me... I feel nothing, and this is the most terrible thing, for the second time in just a few days. I did what I thought was perfect. A new summit, an improvised exploration, a route chosen freely, a patient friend who listens to me babbling nonsense about how websites are built, a random day... but nothing... there is a gloomy silence inside me... I seem to have suddenly become immune to the emotions that were once familiar to me. All this... today... all too familiar. By now we are lost in the mist, and as for going down the way we came up... well... why on earth would we? We could carry on to the Toppe del Tesoro and go down from there... The going is slow, very slow... we are immersed in a milky white with no outlines, no profiles, no shades of colour of any kind. Following the outline of the massif along the ridge, and listening to the music coming from the ski lifts, we finally reach the Toppe del Tesoro. We walked in snow that grew deeper and more treacherous as we gained height. The bad mood lingers. My body is in pieces. This time too I come home with a load of a few dark, blurred photographs. How many more times will I have to go to the mountains and torment myself with thoughts and words before passion finds its way again from the deepest limbic system to conscious thought, all the way to what is the deepest processing of memories? How much longer will I have to wait? I am alone, as each of us is alone with ourselves, in this search for a reason, for reasoning, for a feeling at least sketched out, or for an impulsive gesture that will put the spark back into my feet and legs... all of them...
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