Choices (February 01, 2006)

Choices...many times, you have to face a choice...and here, I had a particulary difficult choice: I had just realized that I was on the wrong path...it was late afternoon, and I had still few hours of light. As if it was not enough, there was a thick fog, I was alone, and tired. The darn GPS was somewhere on my desktop, at home...

But let's begin from the beginning....I started my adventurous trip from Devero in the morning, and I planned to reach the Conti Hut (at an altitude of 2600mt) in early afternoon. It was a cold day of October and the trees had nice autumnal colors. At midday, I was already late on my schedule...too many times I had stopped to admire the landscape! To gain some time, I tried to walk faster, and I didn't even look to the map...until, in late afternoon, I saw a structure in the fog...I had finally reached the hut?...I was tired, but I procedeed with a smile on my face, at least until I come closer and I saw that I had just reached the ruins of an old house. A quick look at the map, and I realized that I was way off my path...and now, the choice...

The safest thing to do would have been to come back to Devero, following the same path...otherwise, I could have come back until the cross-roads where I missed the path, and going on towards the hut, praying to reach it before the night...what to do? Safety or risk? It would be easy to say that I choosen without worries the adventurous path, but actually it was not an easy choice. I knew that I was taking a serious risk...I knew that I was not in great shape and there was still a lot of walk...man, I wasn't even sure to be on the right path now! Nevertheless, my choice was to go on.

I was alone - not many persons are mad enough to walk along narrow paths in the Alps in a cold cloudy foggy day of october...but everywhere around me there were hundreds of Marmots...they looked the weird pilgrim from the warmth of their houses in the grass fields...sometimes they even seemed to smile, as if they were laughing at my efforts. Another day, I would have stopped to take some shots but...I couldn't have cared less about photography in that moment...in my mind there was only the vision of a comfortable hut...

At six o' clock, I was still walking. The landscape was beginning to get darker, I had left the grass fields and the marmots far behind me, and now I was walking on rocks, surrounded by an harsh landscape, half hidden by the fog, without any trace of life, except few lichens....the pack seemed to weight tons, but at this point, there was no way to come back... One hour later, something appeared in the fog...still few steps...and..finally...the hut! A rought structure made of rock and concrete, with nine small beds and a simple, but relatively clean "kitchen". I had time to taken just few snapshots of the place until the landscape disappeared in the darkness and the fog. I didn't have even the strenght to take a dinner - I quickly unpacked my crappy sleeping bag and I toke all the blankets that I found in the hut, to fight - without much success - the cold (don't do these things! there is the risk of hypothermia...anyway, now I've upgraded to a serious Ferrino Diable bag). The temperature was well under zero celsius degrees.

Outside the hut, there was a strong wind, and sometimes an icy breath of air reached my face. I was sooooo glad that I reached in time the hut! I was shivering from the cold, but I was happy. Even without the darn GPS, I had managed to reach the hut. My choice had proven successful - of course, that doesn't mean that it had been the best choice - for sure, it hadn't been the safest - but I had been determined enough, and a bit lucky.

I wasn't able to sleep - I'd have neven guessed that the temperature was *so* cold - so I just listened to the sound of wind and I wondered about my adventure. Every day of life, you have to face choices....you can't choose to don't choose - even doing nothing is a choice. Today I had choosen to follow the steepest road. I doubt that my goal was actually to reach this hut - or to take few good landscape photos...so much fatigue, so much blind determination, just for few shots? Of course not. I was not interested in what I knew that I'd have found - what really intrigues me is the unknow, the things that I unexpectedly find on my way...

I slept for few hours, and I dreamt to get up in early morning and finding meters of snow...but when I actually get up, few minutes after sunrise, I didn't find any snow: outside the hut, there was just silence and cold. Everything was covered by a tiny layer of ice, and the sky was clear. The fog had disappeared during the night, and now the air was limpid. The first, shy rays of Sun didn't bring much relief on my cold hands...nevertheless, after eating a frozen sandwich as breackfast, I mounted the tripod and I begun to take photos with my Canon 350D and the versatile 17-85 IS.

A vision of light and blue skies....the first mountains in front of me were painted of gold by the sunrise light, while, into background, the peaks of Swiss Alps had a blue tone, interrupted only by the pure white of glaciers. A cloud with an odd hand-like shape slowly moved between the mountains. The acid sound of a click ensured me that the moment had been recorded by the camera - but in my mind, it had already been recorded for the eternity.

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