La Zampata dell'Orso by Giancarlo Ferron

And he has done it by describing to us at close quarters an animal that is usually shy and surly. Before talking about the writer, though, we must talk about the man “Giancarlo”. We got to know him...

Already known for books such as “Ho visto piangere gli Animali”, “Ho sentito il Grido dell'Aquila” or “Il suicidio del Capriolo”, in September 2010 Giancarlo Ferron offered us a new book entirely devoted to the Bear.

Before talking about the writer, though, we must talk about the man “Giancarlo”. We got to know him through his story in “La Mia Montagna” and together with him we lived the powerful sensations of living in solitude, immersed in the mountains, almost lost in nature in search of a genuine contact with the most remote wilderness.

Of Giancarlo we know, at least in part, his shy way of being, of feeling at ease in a hostile environment. Beyond his way of life and his choices of work, for this reason only he could talk to us about the bear. And he has done it by describing to us at close quarters an animal that is usually shy and surly. He has done it by entering completely into its way of life, feeling free and dreamy, frightened and furious, just as it shows in its gaze.

The book contains two stories. First we find the true story of Dino the Bear, a splendid bear that set out from Slovenia and got as far as the woods of the Vicenza area. Here Giancarlo meets the gaze of the bear for the first time, a gaze capable of shaking a man's spirit to its very foundations and stamping a total inner change on him.

The second story, according to the author, is the legend of the Bear Man, a story that seems to us entirely true and, if not lived first-hand, at least heard told. It is the story of a man who has lost his woman and, torn apart by grief, flees the over-structured world of men to embrace the simplicity of animal “feeling”. Take it from someone who has read it: the grief of this man-animal comes through in full, and so strongly that at certain moments it becomes unbearable... at least for anyone who, in their own life, has loved at least once.

I won't tell you the end of the story, partly because it is too harsh, too real, but above all because it is too human.