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Zero kilometer beauty

Text by Simone Mondino e Romina Manassero

Too many times, even too often, we decide to leave for a travel and rarely it is towards a destination or an experience nearby.

This desire to go further and further away, as if we were running  away from our daily life or who knows for what other reason, leads us to neglect our home land, our mountains, our valleys. We snobbish them, but certainly not with malice, it is only an automatism present in each one of us.

 

We often forget how lucky we are for being Italians and the beauty we are surrounded by every day. In recent years, however, the awareness of how many possibilities and how much beauty there is here in the Cuneo area is growing. A couple of  phone calls, some chats and we have everything ready: let’s go for a week in Val Varaita, with the Val Varaita Trekking, in search of peace but above all of the beauty of a valley even during the winter season.

 

Kilometer after kilometer we rise in altitude, getting closer and closer to the snow.

Year after year, November looks more like winter than December and that happens also during these days close to Christmas. Our continuous search for positivity makes us think that the snow will come to find us.

 

Between ravioles, craft beers and laughters, the days pass by fast, discovering new landscapes and escaping from rain showers and fog while chasing timid glances of sun.

 

A damned flow of libeccio in fact conditions the atmosphere of the valley but fortunately the abundant snowfall in November allows us to explore new trails such as those of the Gilba valley, the Meira Paula side but also the more traditional ones in the Alevè wood, in Chianale and Bellino.

 

A discovery of the valley in the company of some refuge managers, an “excuse” to socialize, know and understand how the mountain is changing, a way to get in touch with those people who really “live” the mountain and do not use it only as fashion trend. So we find ourselves helping some people to bring supplies on the peak waiting for tourists coming for the holidays, to arrange Christmas decorations in the woods, to prepare typical dishes or simply to toast at the end of the day all together.

A living mountain, true and pure just as we like it.

 

A truly full-immersion week in the life of the valley, an authentic rediscovery of local beauties too often forgotten but that deserve respect and greater appreciation. From the first light of dawn to the night it is a continuous wandering through old villages and enchanted woods and while everything runs around us, its majesty, the snow, arrives to make us stop, to make us understand that we can live the mountain even more slowly, in silence, appreciating all its aspects.

 

The wood crackling in the fireplaces, the smiles of those who live in those places that often seem abandoned but that are more alive than ever, and, outside the window, the flakes slowly accumulating, transforming the landscape around us.

 

Some people may think that the snow can divide but in reality, if you know how to face it and live it, it literally unites everything and everyone. Going out, wearing snowshoes and leaving for any destination, wrapped in absolute silence feeling alive, true and present and, even if for a moment, part of a community.

“There’s no hurry, let’s enjoy this coffee, these flakes on the face, these smiles” a lifestyle that is increasingly forgotten by going to look for it in distant destinations when, instead, it is right here, in front of us, outside our home. It would be nice to understand it more and more because our mountains must return to live as they were used to, they must go back to smile like their inhabitants do, those who still believe in it despite the many sacrifices and above all who resist every day, always.

 

I live not in myself, but I become portion of that around me.

(Lord Byron)

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