Each climber says, even if no one asks him, as it is passionate about the mountains . I had a grandfather mountain guide and even a father or a cousin who it was, but I had an uncle a bit 'special. The cuorisità which then turned into a passion for the mountains I think I have fallen on him at an early age listening to the exploits of my father during the war, not fights, but lived as a boy when he was near the mountains of Belluno. Your country is located along the Via Tilman, so to speak, and not far from where I live. The brake set him my mother saying that having a family as Bonatti was a disgrace. When I was older, I went to the mountains and I liked it right away.
A house of my uncle Bruno, the first picture, crouching on the left, this photo set was just under the glass of an Art Nouveau desk light in color and I remember it as something mythical. In fact my uncle hoped to take up the top where it was captured with his friends walkers, once I was older.
The photo is of '64 and I was born three years earlier.
Il cappello alpino, rientrato a casa per miracolo sulla sua testa assieme a qualche scheggia di granata conficcata in un braccio dalle rive del Don e dalla battaglia di Nikolajewka, lo indossava ogni qualvolta c'entrassero delle montagne. E lui, che era genovese che di più non si poteva, provava orgoglio per essere uno che andava in montagna vestito da alpinista di quei tempi.
Lo zio Bruno ne aveva fatte di tutti i colori in vita sua, e stare a sentire i suoi racconti era uno spasso, specie quelli ambientati in montagna, sovente in situazioni tragicomiche. Gli piacevano le auto sportive e siccome dai miei ricordi ne possedette una soltanto, faceva correre le altre come se lo fossero. Io pensavo che la pubblicità a brand of petrol 'era: "Bees with flies" had studied the thinking of him, because it was his motto when he sat at the helm.
With his wife, the legendary Aunt Terry, as he affectionately called, were a couple hilarious and disturbing: He was driving like crazy and she does not alarmed because it does not ever having a driver's license and only a few diopters, each maneuver even the most reckless, it seemed normal.
Uncle Bruno was a young athlete.
He participated in two Olympics in the Italian national wrestling, spending some years as Italian champion and had a physique that reminded Johnny Weissmueller, to Tarzan, and did things where you need a titanic force without effort. He told me he had the gift of 'Ultraforza, a sort of superenergy that powers hidden in my eyes, had granted him in his youth.
The summit on which the photo was taken was that of Tofana Rozes of that now is the mountain that lies just above my house and I like most. On Tofana we climb at least a dozen times a year on its own, to train, to think and ideas usually come to me beautiful. The Tofana loves me like my mother, I feel it.
The other dolomite mountain Uncle Bruno made me love without meaning is the Sas dla Crusc because andava in vacanza in un albergo che sta proprio ai suoi piedi e costringeva me e i miei genitori a prendere l'aperitivo durante l'enrosadira (quando in estate, al tramonto le pareti si tingono di rosa) , cosa che oggi va di moda nei locali della Val Badia più "in", ma che negli anni sessanta nessuno ostentava. Quando negli anni '80 feci il servizio militare mi capitò di dovere fare il saluto a una vecchia bandiera sgualcita appartenente al 6° Reggimento Alpini che stava in una teca nell' ufficio del mio Comandante di allora, senza sapere bene il perché. Sulla base in legno del mobile lessi Nikolajewka 26 gennaio 1943 e capii che il saluto se lo meritava ricordando la foto che ritraeva lo zio con altri soldati in Russia sul libro Centomila gavette di ghiaccio. Non si capiva se nella foto fosse lui davvero, ma io ci credevo.
Lo zio Bruno se ne è andato pochi giorni fa, poco dopo la zia Terry, che aveva deciso di lasciare questo mondo sulla strada di casa dopo essersi dedicata alla sua passione settimanale: il cinema.
Saranno sulla loro decappottabile a correre sulle nuvole a tutta velocità e vedranno le Dolomiti da molto più in alto.
