Gente di montagna

35 stories, 35 portraits, in ten thousand words, of people encountered in a long wandering through the author's Alpine range. In this gallery of small stories there are no illustrious mountaineers or famous mountain guides but normal people who, in their daily lives, do things that today we can consider extraordinary. There are those who have been guardians of dams, those who repair paths and dry stone walls, those who have carried out the unusual work of 'caminant' and 'caviè', that is, animal guides and hair traders, those who practice 'heroic viticulture', those who live alone in a village and carve leaves and flowers into wood. There is also the scientist who has risen to higher altitudes to better study climate change, who has returned to being a park ranger after being struck by lightning, who runs through the woods as a lifestyle choice, who at 90 has returned to be the parish priest of the mountain pastures. And, again, those who put their degrees in the drawer to become a muleteer, delivering goods to the mountain pastures, like a city rider, those who play and repair ancient instruments, those who hand-build cow bells and the musical bells used by the great symphony orchestras. These are just a few examples of the unique, original, sometimes bizarre characters, capable of surprising with their personality and their truly singular contribution so that the mountains can continue to live. Pioneers of the high lands and peaceful partisans of the mountains of the future.