ΛLPINHEΛRT 2023
ΛLPINHEΛRT 2023
By Fra Indi
I would love to write that ΛLPINHEΛRT was about cold, snow and happy mountains; in a word: winter. Unfortunately, this would be a mystifying illusion.
I am quite sure winter no longer exists in our latitudes and is about to become a mere faded image of what it was in the past. Mild weather, drought and snow which melts too quickly.
Image 1. Fra Indi with the Jaranga Siberian Husky Team in the snowy mountains. Winter 2022.
ΛLPINHEΛRT was born from the desire to travel along the Alps with my sled dogs searching for what is left of these mountains' true spirit. The mountains welcomed us, as nature always does, in contrast with civilized humans who often seem to forget the value of hospitality.
ΛLPINHEΛRT was an encounter with the mountain itself and with those who have been able to draw benefits and lessons from it. The people I met have an authentic connection with the highlands: I talked about the sense of exploration with Alex Bellini and Michele Pontrandolfo (explorers), and the role of nature in imagination and creativity with Livio Ceschin (artist).
I went along a trail with Dario Valsesia, a great bicycle traveler with a visceral love for adventures in cold and isolated landscapes. I met Alessandra and Erik of the Oak Church Ranch, who are inspired by the mountains, to create their educational project far from the rules and logic of an oppressive social system.
Image 2. The tent pitched on a sunny morning with the sled and tackle.
The encounter becomes enrichment, growth and an exchange of opinions. It helps reshape personal cornerstones. In a period of history where the joy of the encounter is fading just like the snow in the alpine winter, the encounter represents a fundamental resource for the development of consciousness.
The dogs were my travel companions, faithful friends, always proud and safe, even when the snow was scarce leaving only the bare ground under the sled. Our Alps are undergoing a process of adaptation and readjustment.
Image 3. The Jaranga Siberian Husky Team dealing with very varied terrain.
Practicing my idea of mushing and exploration here is more like a paleontological activity with the difference that there is no glorious past emerging from the dissolving snow, only an uncertain future of massive changes.
The few nights spent in the tent during ΛLPINHEΛRT made me think about our domesticated lives laden with excess. We chase an evanescent happiness based on the superfluous without realizing that contentment lies in the awareness that "less is better".
The mountain can be a powerful symbol of all this: the effort and pleasure to walk up the slopes just for the sake of being there. That is also the meaning I give to my explorations: I like to be in a place for the true joy that my spirit and body feel in being right there. The mountains are exactly as they should be and have everything they need to be what they are: why don't we learn from them?
Image 5. The Jaranga Siberian Husky Team enjoying the better snow conditions higher up.
Instead, we come up with any sort of attractions to make them ‘suitable’ for tourism (being it sustainable or not). Institutions and associations of any kind are planning to reinvent the tourist experience in the mountains according to a more sustainable economy. Don't you realize how bad and dangerous this approach is? A land must provide ‘democratic’ and ‘sustainable’ attractions: a huge mistake, especially if suggested by individuals whose only relationship with the nature is based on divertissement (having fun).
Image 6. The Jaranga Siberian Husky Team enjoy the slow morning.
ΛLPINHEΛRT taught me that the highlands are beautiful in themselves, they must be discovered, reached and even left there inaccessible. Civilization aims to exploit and imprison alpine wilderness in the name of "green economy", but this is another story.
ΛLPINHEΛRT is about the beauty of the mountain. An authentic, spontaneous, no-frills beauty. A beauty that penetrates the gaze of attentive souls. The mountain is beautiful, vast, immense even in its infinitesimally small nature; it embraces you and cradles you under the winter mantle. It is somehow reassuring.
The mountains are already changing and adapting to all the bad actions Civilization has been inflicting on them. Their inhabitants are there vigilant, sentinels: plants, stones, animals and human beings.
Image 7. The Jaranga Siberian Husky Team being very patient during the photo opportunity.
Get out of the cities and let yourself be invaded by the spirit of the mountains.
Why don't we understand? Why have we ended up being so physically and emotionally detached from beauty? We even struggle to realize the damage we cause to that beauty whilst we obsessively try to recreate it!
Yet, the mountains will adapt on their own and will continue to be thriving and rich lands. The mountain is the very essence of the immutability of existence: everything changes so that nothing changes, but everything vanishes in the impermanence of things.
This winter journey developed in chapters and I figured out that mountains are claiming their freedom and are not willing to become a playground for human activities. The mountains just want to be...mountains.
Fra Indi
Jaranga Siberian Husky Team
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the individual and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Expedition Foods.
Also in Stories
Expedition Foods Breakfast Earns Praise from The Great Outdoors Magazine!
We’re proud to have received a glowing review for our plant-based breakfast, Rolled Oats with Apple and Blackcurrant, that’s not only nutritious and delicious but also mindful of dietary needs and environmental impact.
Rowing Across the Mediterranean with NOMAN
40 degree heat, sea swells, salt sores, blisters, dehydration, sea sickness… The decision to take on the adventure of rowing across the Mediterranean is not one that is taken lightly.
In Praise of the Calorie
Norman Hadley on eating in the outdoors, and why he keeps coming back to Expedition Foods.