Monte Viglio, betraying the trust of a dog...

Tuesday, 25 October 2005

It's one of those sunny autumn days, the last sun of the season. I decide to go out to keep my legs moving, for training. I walk pleasantly along the dirt track that climbs from the Valico di Serra S. Antonio up to Fonte della Moscosa.

But this is not my story. It's the story of an old dog... the way dogs are, instinctive, simple, perhaps in some ways even a bit stupid. What kind of fool could ever be man's best friend... Go and trust man, of all things. And yet it is precisely in that stupid simplicity of theirs, in their instinctive genuineness, that dogs manage to be faithful.

I meet a rather old dog. He's alone, he has an orange collar round his neck, but on the whole he looks like a well-kept dog. Maybe he's just lost; I don't even want to imagine that he has been abandoned.

When we meet at the place called “fonte della moscosa” the dog eyes me suspiciously and growls, frightened. I give him a hard stare and let him understand that I have nothing against him. I say a few reassuring words and he seems to understand. Maybe not the words, but my behaviour. From that moment on the dog will decide to follow me almost all the way to the summit.

This is what dogs are capable of. Incomprehensible gestures of loyalty. I already know that I won't be able to take him home, as I would like to, but I would be the first one unable to look after him. The dog keeps on and on, and for me this is an even greater sorrow, one I will carry with me for the whole route.

Most of the time the dog goes ahead of me. He is the one leading the way. I have climbed Monte Viglio many times by now. All I was missing was climbing it without snow. The Monti Simbruini keep their charm in any season of the year. In winter the snow makes the landscape truly “alpine”; in spring and autumn the landscape is pleasant, the area is made for hiking. It's wonderful. The colours of autumn are painting the trees with their endless colours and the endless shades of orange, yellow and red.

My aim is to spend a completely relaxing day, getting to know these places fully. I have come to see the notorious Gendarme passage, at last free of snow. Just the year before it had cut down the ambitions of a foolish hiker like me.

I move at a steady pace, I'm in excellent physical shape, I'm not wearing too much and the air is neither too cold nor too warm. It's an ideal, perfect day.

The dog is not that young after all, his coat is grey and I keep wondering what could have brought him up this mountain. And yet the feeling of having him beside me is curious, new for me... his presence is constant and exceptional.

When we get to the Gendarme I carry on over the grade I move, and he looks at me, bewildered. Dear friend, this is where our paths part. I couldn't do anything else for you... I think... and I carry on with a lump in my throat.

The descent from the Gendarme towards the summit is trivial and at last, in a few moments, I'm on the summit. I have reached that summit by a route I had been dreaming of for a long time. I still hope to climb it, at least once, in winter conditions.

Within certain limits Monte Viglio lends itself to hikes for young hikers. Children from 8 upwards. In summer, when there is no snow at all, you can get round the Gendarme by passing below it on a path with no difficulty whatsoever.

A wonderful walk, to be repeated in every season.

Of that dog who followed me so faithfully as far as the Gendarme I never heard anything again, only the sense of guilt at having betrayed him when he, on the contrary, with a few simple gestures had shown me his trust; animals are like that... direct, decidedly more human than we are...