I really enjoy taking long walks in nature. Every day, either in the morning or in the afternoon – it depends on when my commitments allow me to do so – I put on my jersey and battle trousers, a pair of comfortable, sturdy-soled trail shoes, and I set off into the hills, accompanied by the gaze and the thought – and only those! – of my fiancée, who does not at all share this passion of mine for the ‘long march of the doomed’, as she calls it.
I rarely set myself a fixed destination: I know I have an autonomy of about three hours, more or less 20 km walking at a very brisk pace, and I choose the route that inspires me most. After leaving the house and the village, in a few minutes I leave the asphalt behind me. I take one of the paths that cross or border woods, fields, and vineyards, and start walking towards the relaxation of mind and body.
To be precise, the mind relaxes before the body, because at least three of my favourite routes start after a climb over a kilometre long. It’s not particularly steep, mind you, but being the first stretch to be tackled as soon as you leave the house, perhaps in the cold of a winter morning or in the still hot air of summer, it gets into your legs and lungs. Age (mine) being what it is, there is little you can do.
But it is worth it. When I reach the top, a small clearing at the edge of the road invites me to fill my eyes with the phenomenal spectacle of Montalcino, straight ahead, on the other side of the valley that separates us. If you pass this way at sunset, the sky and the clouds are a triumph of shades of yellow, orange, and red that bless every step of the climb you have just taken.
Then we set off again.
Dirt or muddy stretches alternate with expanses of grass or soil, and the steps are surprisingly light, because the pure air, the absence of noise, and the rural scenery free my head of all thought, and make me feel light of foot and mind.
The spaces between the trees become open windows onto distant mountains, well-kept fields, villages, and hamlets. The sense of smell rejoices in the smell of grass, wet earth, or the unmistakable sweetness of must from the cellars. It rejoices a little less when you pass by some freshly fertilised fields, but that’s nature, you know?
Walking through these pristine places opens the mind to thoughts, solutions, intuitions, reasoning that I would find hard to conceive in the confines of an office or among the buildings of a city. It must be a question of space.
When I am out walking I have a mountain of free space around me, and the mind expands, expands, like a river that invades every space and crevice, explores them until it finds unexpected and surprising outlets.
The sky above me and on the horizon changes incessantly with the tireless comings and goings of the clouds, which I much prefer to the monotonous blue sheets that unroll over my head on clear, calm days.
The cloudy sky, with a breath of wind, is an agitated multicoloured sea, traversed by waves that draw and redesign ever-changing shapes and contours. In that shuffling, sometimes slow, sometimes swirling, fantasy and imagination kick into high gear, stimulating even the rational part of the brain.
The brain works fast and processes a thousand thoughts each second, the eyes are full of wonder, the feet do not feel the fatigue. It is only when I am on my way back, two or three kilometres from home, that my body feels tired. Then I realise that I have walked for three hours and a bit, in the cold or in the sun, in the rain or in the wind, climbing up more than a few hills and underestimating some ascending slight slopes that from a distance seem much flatter than they really are.
“All calories burned,” I say to myself, thinking of all that I will be able to eat without guilt.
Back home, I am greeted by the benevolent smile of my fiancée, who without getting too close asks me how it went, and adds that I smell ‘like a wet goat’.
I cannot blame her.
www.valdorciaskies.com 