Asfalto e Pietre (Asphalt and Stones)

There are certain forks in life that you take on instinct, choices that look like passing moments in time and space, of no particular importance, small things. Sometimes they are choices based on naivety and a hunger for adventure, and naivety is, after all, the engine of creation: the state of mind that, faced with the jump from that rock, the sea looking very far below – come on, it’s only a few metres – makes you decide to jump, whatever the consequences, and sometimes the water turns as hard as concrete and you get hurt.

But pain is the other engine of creation. […] You are there, in the middle of that long strip of asphalt, it is dark and all you can do is go forward, or back, you are not quite sure. You feel the tyres warming up and gaining grip, the engine pulling smoothly, and you begin to enjoy that search, you begin to enjoy the space you cut through, unaware. You don’t know if it is the right road home, you don’t care about the direction, you end up not being sure a home actually exists. There is only the now, the here, the next bend.

There is naivety, there is pain, there is a motorcycle and a full tank of petrol. What could go wrong?

Insomnia is chewing my brain anyway. So I see no reason not to leave early: ahead there are many hours on the asphalt, wind pounding my ears, eyes growing tired of watching the white lines that cut across the road. Line, line, line, line, line, car, line, line, line. The closer the lines are, the faster they go, and I suspect there may be a deep metaphor in this, but I can’t grasp it.

[…]

The stops for petrol raise my frustration which, by the time I start to climb, after Conegliano and the endless boredom of the Po Valley, has me grinding my teeth.

Then everything turns green, grey and pink, steep and sharp, I am in time for the sunset, for the soft warm light that will kiss those peaks, the fire behind the summit of Monte Cristallo. And I can’t make the goosebumps go away.

The first dawn and I am not ready. The air is cold enough to freeze even your thoughts, and the north wind beats on the frozen ground, below zero even though it is September. I thought I was prepared, I had studied, but the wind cuts through my clothes like a scalpel, without any apparent effort. I watch the sun rise slowly, light up the summit of Ra Gusela, bounce warm off the flat wall of the Averau and then settle softly on the meadows north of Passo Giau, a warmth that is only apparent.

Then my body tells me enough and, teeth chattering uncontrollably, I get back on the bike.

You are in a dark place, scratching the cold walls with bleeding fingernails, then you find yourself here, freezing, and there is only what you are doing, the body in emergency mode asking you to do something, and you are no longer in the prison of your own head. Adrenaline and cortisol to help me escape.

I heard the sound of the mountain for the first time many years ago, on the soft peaks of Abruzzo. It is a deep rumble, coming from every direction, that stirs you unexpectedly, echoing in your guts with the notes of a threat or the warning of a pissed-off old God. Hearing it again here, channelled into the spaces between the stones, playing hide-and-seek with the senses, the deep roar of the sudden gusts, the icy whisper of the snow falling on Monte Averau among the clouds. Then the sun suddenly comes out, the grass turns yellow and red, glossy with cold and with snow mixed with rain, a rainbow appears in the distant mist and, in the sudden silence, the lonely sound of a stone falling down the vertical wall, pushed by who knows what, perhaps the slow movement of the mountain that has lasted for millions of years, or perhaps just another warning from that old God.

By now the bike rides itself, the asphalt is smooth and it no longer even feels the hairpins, like a body so trained to do something that it becomes automatic, pure instinct, the gesture brought to its ultimate synthesis. […] She goes and I let her, she knows the road better than I do. She knows perfectly well that what matters is not where you are going but being far away, casting your gaze to the horizon and searching. Sooner or later, one day, I am sure I will understand for what. But for now I let her go, there is adventure to chase, there is the waiting for the sun to drop between the peaks and give that moment of perfection, cutting across the pink rock, drawing shapes that can break your heart and, at the same time, heal it. Fill that bottomless black hole you have right in the middle of your soul. Even if just for a single, solitary moment.

I will go back to the soft hills of central Italy, to the warmth of sunny October afternoons, to the solitary flight of a grey butterfly in that melancholy end-of-summer-holiday air. I will make new plans, new barren plains to cross, restlessness will call me again. But for now there is only the cold, the asphalt and the stones.

And I need nothing else.