Paolo Cognetti - The Eight Mountains

We would leave early in the morning, driving up to the villages at the foot of Monte Rosa. They were more fashionable tourist spots than our own, and with sleep-filled eyes I saw rush past the strings of little villas, the hotels built in an “Alpine” style in the early twentieth century, the ugly condominiums of the sixties, the caravan sites along the river. The whole valley was still in shadow and wet with dew. My father drank a coffee in the first open bar, then flung his rucksack over his shoulder with the seriousness of an Alpine infantryman. The path would start behind a church, or after a wooden footbridge, then enter the woods and immediately steepen. Before taking it I would look up at the sky. Above our heads the glaciers sparkled, illuminated by the sun; the early morning cold raised the hairs on my arms.

On the path my father would let me walk in front. He would keep a step behind me, so that when necessary I could hear what he was saying, and hear his breathing. I had rules to follow, few but clear: one, establish a pace and keep to it without stopping; two, no talking; three, when faced with a fork in the way, always choose the uphill route. He puffed and panted more than I did, on account of his smoking and his sedentary office life, but for at least an hour he would not countenance a break; not to get our breath back, or to drink, or to look at anything. The woods were of no interest, in his eyes. It was my mother, in our wanderings around Grana, who would point out plants and trees and teach me their names, as if each one was a person with its own character; but for my father the woods merely provided access to the mountains: we climbed through them with our heads down, concentrating on the rhythm of our walking—of our legs, lungs, and hearts—in mute, private communion with our own exertions. Underfoot there were stones worn down over centuries by the passage of animals and men. Sometimes we would pass a wooden cross, or a bronze plaque engraved with a name, or a shrine with a small Madonna and some flowers, giving to those corners of the wood the somber atmosphere of a cemetery. And then the silence between us assumed a different character, as if this was the only respectful way to pass by them.

I would only look up when the trees ended. On the flank of the glacier the path became less steep, and emerging into the sun, we would come across the last of the high villages. These were abandoned or semi-abandoned places, in even worse condition than Grana, except for the odd isolated stable, a fountain that still worked, a chapel that was still maintained. Above and below the houses the ground had been flattened and the stones collected in piles, and then ditches had been dug to irrigate and fertilize and the banks of the river terraced so as to make fields and vegetable gardens: my father would show me these works and speak with admiration of the old mountain people. Those that had arrived from the north of the Alpine region during the Middle Ages were capable of cultivating land where no one else had ventured before. They had special techniques, as well as a special resistance to the cold and to deprivation. Nowadays, he said, no one could survive the winter up there, completely self-sufficient for food and for everything else, as these people had managed to do for centuries.

I looked at the crumbling houses and tried hard to imagine their inhabitants. I couldn’t even begin to understand how anyone could have chosen such a hard life. When I asked my father he answered in his usual enigmatic way: it always seemed as if he could not give me a solution, but only a few clues instead, so that I would only arrive at the truth through my own efforts.

He said: “They didn’t really choose it. If someone comes up this high, it’s because down below they won’t leave them in peace.”

“And who is bothering them there, down below?”

“Landlords. Armies. Priests. Bosses. It depends.”

I could tell from the tone of his reply that he wasn’t being entirely serious. Now he was bathing his neck with water from the fountain, and was already more cheerful than he had been first thing that morning. He shook the water from his head, wrung it from his beard, and looked up above. In the deep valleys that awaited us there was nothing impeding our view, and sooner or later we would notice someone further up ahead of us on the path. He had an eye as sharp as a hunter’s with which to pick out those small red or yellow dots—the color of a rucksack or of an anorak. The more distant they were, the more mocking the tone with which he would ask, pointing to them: “What do you think, Pietro, shall we catch them?”

“Sure,” I would answer, wherever they were.

Then our climb would be transformed into a pursuit. Our muscles were well warmed up, and we still had energy to burn. We were ascending through the August pastures, past isolated alpeggi , herds of indifferent cows, dogs that came growling around our ankles, and swathes of nettles that stung my bare legs.

“Cut across,” my father would say, where the path took a slope too gentle for his liking. “Go straight. Go up this way.”

Eventually the incline would steepen, and it was there on those merciless concluding slopes that we would catch our prey. Two or three men, about his age and dressed just like him. They confirmed my sense that there was something from another era about this way of going into the mountains, and that it obeyed outmoded codes. Even the manner they adopted when giving way to us had something ceremonious about it: they would step aside, to the edge of the path, and come to a standstill in order to let us pass. They had no doubt seen us coming, had tried to keep ahead of us, and were not pleased at being caught.

“Good day to you,” one would say. “The boy sure can run, no?”

“He sets the pace,” my father would reply. “I just follow.”

“What I’d give to have legs like his.”

“That’s right. But we did have once.”

“Oh sure. Decades ago maybe. Are you going right to the top?”

“If we can make it.”

“Good luck,” one of them would say, and with that the exchange was concluded.

We would move off in silence, just as we had arrived. Gloating was not allowed, but a little while later, when we were a good distance away, I would feel a hand on my shoulder; just a hand touching and pressing, and that was all.

Perhaps it’s true, as my mother maintained, that each of us has a favorite altitude in the mountains, a landscape that resembles us, where we feel best. Hers was no doubt that of the woods at fifteen hundred meters, that of the spruce and larch, in the shadow of which the blueberries, junipers, and rhododendrons grow, and the roe deer hide. I was more attracted to the kind of mountainscape that comes afterwards: Alpine meadows, torrents, wetlands, high-altitude herbs, grazing animals. Higher up again the vegetation disappears; snow covers everything until the beginning of summer; and the prevailing color is that of the gray rock, veined with quartz and the yellow of lichen. That was where my father’s world began. After three hours’ walking the meadows and woods would give way to scree, to lakes hidden in glacial basins, to gorges gouged by avalanches, to streams of icy water. The mountain was transformed into a harsher place, inhospitable and pure: up there he would become happy. He was rejuvenated, perhaps, going back to other mountains and other times. His very step seemed lighter, to have regained a lost agility.

I, on the other hand, was exhausted. Exertion and the lack of oxygen tightened my stomach and made me feel sick. This nausea made every meter a struggle. My father was incapable of noticing: approaching three thousand meters the path became less distinct; on the scree there remained only stone cairns and signs daubed in paint; and he would finally take his place at the head of the expedition. He wouldn’t look round to check on how I was. If he did turn, it was only so as to shout out: “Look!” pointing out, on the ridge of the crest above, the horns of the ibexes who were keeping an eye on us, like guardians of that mineral world. Looking up, the summit still seemed very far off to me. My nostrils were filled with the smell of frozen snow and flint.