In the solitude of the mountain

Nando took his first steps on the steep paths that climb to the top of his mountain and, even when he was forced to work on a construction site in the valley, he always wanted to return to that silence, to the last light that lights up the forest in the evening, to the solitary farm that protects him from the noise of the world. For this reason, when the “Milanese” says that he heard, on a stormy night, the powerful roar of an animal and the evil scratching of its claws against the door, Nando does not believe him. The Milanese does not know the mountains, he does not know what he is talking about. No animal is capable of uprooting a larch, of making a stable tremble. But when Silvia, one of the few people capable of tearing Nando away from his solitude, confesses to him that she too has heard something and is afraid, he sets out towards that mystery.

Thus begins Sarà la montagna (Neri Pozza, 2024, pp. 224, also e-book), Luca Saltini's latest literary effort, a novel in which the protagonist, Nando, renews his ancestral bond with the harsh nature in which he was born and raised. Driven by his curiosity and Silvia's words, he leaves at night, ploughs through the green silence of the woods, crosses the pure emotion of untouched places, experiences the beauty of a night under the starry sky, of a clearing after an inextricable tangle of branches. And he sees the past with its ghosts, the shadows of dreams he couldn't realize, the love he didn't have the courage to defend. To the measured rhythm of his breathing, Nando will find the way to what threatens the country. Because the mountain gives a lot, everything, to those like him, but it knows when the time has come to make them pay a price.

We first ask Luca Saltini what the mountain represents for him:

"Today, for me, it is above all a refuge. In the past, it had forcefully assumed this role, when populations climbed there to escape armies and plagues. It seems to me that in our troubled age, this idea has returned with force to fuel our imagination. There are wars, epidemics, but above all, there is a society that we feel is oppressive. An ideology dominates that believes it is possible to indefinitely exploit the planet's resources and to standardize cultures and people under uniform lifestyles and ways of thinking. In this sense, the mountain, with its small communities, with the villages where everyone knows each other, where people have a role and a name, becomes a laboratory for an alternative society. This is the world that is described in the novel and the cradle where the characters find the opportunity to be happy."

There is a lot of walking in the book. What is walking for you?

"I really like being in the woods and I like the sensations you feel when you walk among the trees, the step that fades on the pine needles, the scents, the rustling. In that context, the mind frees itself from a lot of waste and thought composes itself in a more orderly way. Walking and thinking go together. Thinking is not only an activity of the head, but also of the body that favors it with its walking. I don't happen to make great reflections while walking in the woods, in fact, I have the sensation that my mind is completely still. And yet, after a bit of that walking, ideas form instead, like small revelations."

Who is Nando, how would you define him?

"Nando is a man born and raised on the mountain. He has an empathetic relationship with the mountain that allows him to approach it in an intimate way, to grasp its secret messages and discover its most hidden beauties. From the mountain he learned the idea of being self-sufficient and above all the philosophy of simplicity, according to which to be happy he just needs a mountain to climb and the freedom to do so."

In your book, nature is sometimes scary and creates anxiety. Is this really how you feel in the mountains?

«In the book, the characters feel at ease on the mountain, because they are aware that knowing how to relate to nature correctly, learning to grasp its messages, they are able to live with it in absolute harmony. However, the mountain is rough and you cannot think of entering into a relationship with it by remaining in a bubble. You have to work hard, climb it with your own feet, endure the cold, the wind, hurt your hands on the rocks. Today, however, we tend to experience it a bit too much in a touristic way, sometimes exaggerating in putting mediators between us and its harshness - technologies, comforts, the lifestyles of our urban society. All this prevents us from truly relating to the mountain and makes us just foreign bodies on its slopes, while we would have the opportunity to enter into a deeper relationship that would allow us to look at the mountain with different eyes».

What answers can the mountain give to those who are searching for something?

"The mountain with its vastness makes us concretely experience the tension we feel within us between our finitude - our limits, our fears, our fragility - and the aspiration to infinity. This experience, even without venturing into extreme enterprises, opens the soul to a listening that is always revealing."