SURROUNDED BY SILENCE

Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated by the peaks that surrounded me. The Lagorai mountain range was part of my everyday landscape: I saw it every morning as I left home to go to school, and in the afternoon, when I headed to the playground to meet my friends. It was a constant, almost familiar presence, something that had been part of my life long before I truly understood what it meant.

As I grew older, I had the opportunity to get closer and closer to those mountains. I began exploring their trails and reaching some of their peaks with my father and, later, with my friends. Every hike became a different way of discovering that landscape: through the effort of the ascent, the silence of the forests, the changing light, and that particular feeling you experience when, step by step, the landscape slowly begins to open up before you.

It is precisely this relationship with the mountains that, over the years, has shaped my curiosity and the way I observe the world around me. I love the silence you encounter as you climb, the fresh and clean air, the wind moving across the ridgelines, and that sense of distance you feel when, after reaching a summit, everything seems to slow down.

And then there are the views. From up there, the mountains I once saw as enormous and unreachable as a child become part of a much larger landscape. One mountain range gives way to another, the valleys intertwine, and the horizon seems to have no end.

For me, the mountains have never simply been a destination to reach. They are, above all, a place to stop, to observe, and to rediscover a more authentic connection with the landscape. They are made of silence, effort, light, and waiting. Perhaps it is precisely this dimension, so far removed from the rush of everyday life, that has taught me to look at the landscape with greater attention.

Even today, whenever I return to those mountains, I find something familiar. The peaks have changed over time, just as I have, but the feeling has remained the same: the sense of wonder I experienced as a child while looking at the Lagorai and wondering what lay beyond those mountains.