Autumn chill

Above just about anything else, I remember the wind when we were in Patagonia. First, on the shores of Lago Pingo in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, and then in Argentina’s Glacier National Park at Lago Electrica. It came across this massive ice field, second largest in the world, if I recall correctly, and whistled across the glacial waters to the shores where we met it. I remember imagining the path it had travelled, and tried in my own mind to do the same – envisioning the route across the dark and bitter southern ocean, and then barrelling across the bleak, frozen expanses, all well beyond the pale of human endurance. I was enraptured by it – somehow it struck at the core of my human survival sensitivities, wanting to know how it would be out there, out of this comfort zone.

And so when I feel this chill autumn wind here in Marche, and there’s an undercurrent to it as if it is coming from far away, my romantic memories resurface, and I am invigorated by the elemental nature of it. Clearly, Regnano is a long way from Patagonia, there’s no ice field within a thousand miles, and I can step into my house instead of my tent, but who gives a damn. It adds an edge to autumn and lends just a hint of the pioneering spirit to our endeavours here. (The half-camping nature of our existence here might have something to do with it.)

The skies are also brooding, as a few of the pictures in a recent blog post attest, and there’s the scent of a portent in the air. Or perhaps it’s just in my mind. I’ve heard so many warnings about the severity of the winter that I’m waiting with trepidation for it to hit us in our uninsulated, unheated house. And if it comes when the roof’s being worked on … hell, I don’t even know where we’ll be sleeping then, probably in the uninsulated, unheated caravan, and waking up with stiff backs in craggy moods. Boy, I can’t wait.

In the meantime, I’ll just let my mind wander over those Patagonian ice fields, and the legendary peaks of the Sibillini mountains …