Walking in the "lands of never"

I'm fighting against the “land of never”; the kitchen clock goes tick-tock and yet the night seems motionless. One after another I see the messages from my hiking companions arriving. Nothing doing... this time the outing is postponed. Alone in the mountains there'd be no point; I stay in bed asleep too.

The hours pass, sleep carries the night away and yet I still feel the darkness around me...

I'm in the  shower, trying to relax my muscles under the jet of hot water... I can't cry. I have a lump in my throat that tells of a tension buried deep down. On the threshold of forty I feel lost as I had never felt before. The mountains seem lost and far away. Friends far away. Questions of meaning far away.
I haven't been out for over three months, and my last climb was generously given to me by Massimo, who literally hauled me up the Dente del Lupo.

Hiking. That's what I like, relaxing into the healthy fatigue of a long walk... that's what I miss.

The drops of water fall in slow motion, while I struggle against the “land of never”.
Never can you win victory over the darkness; only locally can you move about with your ever-ancient little oil lamp. You bring to light some small object, you uncover a face (it's yours)   you discover things of existence only for them to end up swallowed by the dark. And then... nothing, the void. The great meanings are lost in the “land of never”.

Alessandro and I decide to go out the next day. For a long time he's wanted to visit the Valle Majelama before it's closed off by the Forestry Corps for the return of the birds of prey. He agrees... we go out, taking advantage of a Monday of sunshine and high pressure.

At half past eight we're at the mouth of the Valle Majelama. It's not excessively cold; we soon adapt to the temperatures of this mild winter.

This too is a “land of never”: never can you possess it, never can you be fully aware of it. It slips away from your gaze behind a hill, hides behind a bush. You walk along the valley floor to the very end, the view is denied to your eyes. You can sense the summits, the ridges, but … damn it, this is the “land of never”. Never see, never understand,  never know in advance the direction you'll have to follow.

The Valle Majelama is known for its beauty, and yet the first three kilometres are fairly anonymous. Nothing exceptional. Only when the upper part of the valley appears before our eyes do we start to get a foretaste of the high mountains. The blue sky and the dazzling white snow restore our spirits.

I hadn't walked in snow for almost a year. I'm physically in pieces, my groin ligaments hurt ferociously. The snow is hard but every now and then, when you sink in, it's a struggle to get out of the deep holes. At times I have to take hold of my legs with both hands to lift them one at a time.

It takes three and a half hours of marching to come out on Colle del Bicchero; the view that opens up over the Valle dei Briganti and the Val di Teve is wonderful. Alessandro is overjoyed. For years he had dreamed of climbing this valley to look at the wildest and most isolated heart of Monte Velino.
On top of Colle del Bicchero the air is still, the warm sun warms our shoulders. The first thing you  think of on the top of a mountain is your loved ones; we try to contact them by mobile but the signal is poor. Alessandro only manages to send a text home. All well, we're at the top.

We're both wrecked with tiredness and we wonder what getting down this mountain will be like.

I've walked for four hours, on hard snow, sure... but having to overcome three months without exercise. I've put on six kilos, I've been dragging a cold around for almost three weeks. Today nothing would have stopped me. I had to feel once again the lightness you feel on the top of a mountain.

And yet this too is the “land of never”. You think you're making great conquests, you think you're crossing unknown boundaries; this too is only an illusion.

Our gaze is short-sighted by definition. We can't see beyond the horizon. Not even the nearest one; in life we move as if in a deep-cut valley. We bravely put one foot in front of the other in the hope of coming out on a col for a few moments to admire a landscape of incredible and wonderful lights, shadows and shapes.

There's nothing doing... even in the mountains we carry our baggage of existential problems with us, we can't free ourselves of it, … never... Some of us carry hopes, others hatred, hoping to be rid of it once at the top; some of us carry a flag, whatever it may be, in the hope that it might symbolise once and for all their way of feeling the world. Many dare to take photographs but bring home only empty icons of their conquests. In the “land of never” we are just donkeys with our unbearable burden.

I leave the prayer flags in the hope of finding good humour, positivity, hope again. I don't know how to pray, and yet deep inside I ask the wind to carry away my restlessness, my anxieties as a middle-aged man.

The descent is strangely quick. With just two hours' walking we're back at the car. The dark, pessimistic thoughts are far away; what remains is a healthy, pleasant tiredness of the body. It's good to feel your body alive again. There, quite simply, this seems to give me a little well-being. I feel that it's this simplicity,  this concreteness that I must cling to. And as I drive a smile rises on my face … at last I put things back in the right perspective of life.