Sweet sadness
9/12/2023
It's been a week since I came back, yet, every morning I wake up with the idea, that I need to get ready to hike the mountains again. The truth is that only eight days passed above the clouds. When I was there, seemed as if you had never lived a different life. You would get up to drink coffee while listening to the melody of cowbells and gaze at the mountains that were getting more beautiful every day. And after breakfast, you would go for a walk in the valleys. (Or you would hike twenty kilometers per day, up and down, with a heavy backpack, as the biggest idiots would do. But this is just an idea for future crazy people). You probably get used to good things too quickly.
I've never been a mountain person. I love the oceans. Talking about the highs - I always just looked at the mountains with a deep sigh that- it's not for me - for someone else to love it. And yet, having never climbed a mountain before, having been lying on the couch all summer, I thought I would climb them all in one go. People prepare for such challenges for a year, and I, a famous idiot, thought that I would do it with no problem. Maybe that's why, when I went down, I looked at those peaks and believed again that miracles exist. Because it was too hard. So hard that many times I looked around thinking I should go back, but that “back” was far too far to believe that the summit was just around the corner. And so I found the strength, for eight days. 125 km. While those angles changed, each revealing more and more beautiful views, which the whole world is knocking here to see. "If paradise looks like this, then I'm ready for it," laughed an American in his eighties, watching the scene, which I captured in a photo. Everyone who heard him nodded and sighed in agreement, until within minutes the clouds hid the mountains, and everyone went their separate ways in search of other peaks.
I met a local, Jo Luca, who grew up in the Dolomites. Is it still beautiful, I asked. One cannot get used to beauty, answered the Italian. And somehow, I became calm. There are things we will not get used to. Things we will always long for.
This always happens. You only understand what you experience after a while. And for me, that happened only when I was drinking wine at the bottom of the mountains and looking at the red peaks in the sunset. I thought that the best feeling is to do the things you are afraid of. Sounds cheesy. But when you try, you understand. Such a sweet sadness comes at the end of everything. Good sadness, a soft one. There are no words left, but it makes you feel warmer.
Earlier, I thought that travelers running from someone, hiding from something, that they carry many unsolvable life questions with them in their backpacks. I don't think like this anymore.
I think I know a little bit more about what's going on in their heads.
There are days when I still ask myself if I can see the end of all this nonsense, called “My life”. When will I calm down? To be honest, I tried once - it didn't work out. Therefore, I assume that my odyssey has no end yet. Not much comfort there. However, there is a lot of life.
Let's climb those mountains that we thought we would never overcome.
Up there, your head is spinning.
But it’s nice there. It's so beautiful you'll never get used to it.
And from there, you can see more horizons, which are waiting for you.
And if there is also a friend nearby, then you are on the right path.