“For tomorrow, they’re announcing a meter of snow”,  smiles Augusto happily. “I won’t believe it even if I see it, but I'd be really pleased”. That night, here in Sauris, there are no stars on show and it’s not clear how the morning will be. In the warm room of the cosy chalet I'm even too hot. At four o'clock I feel like opening the door to the terrace to breathe the cool air of the mountain. Then I fall asleep again, dreaming of a white blanket into which I sink.

Dense dry snow is falling rapidly.

I go out after a good breakfast, with scrambled eggs, speck, yoghurt, cereals and even a glass of sparkling wine to celebrate the new year that has arrived silently with the snowflakes.

It is certainly not a metre, but the white blanket covers everything we can see, sticking to every single pine needle, covering the buds of the ancient larch, adhering to the walls of the houses and cloaking the roofs over terraces and balconies. It is falling thickly, preventing a view into the distance, colouring the sky and covering our feet in white.

“There is nothing else to do”, I say silently to myself slipping on my snowshoes and tightly tying my snowboard to the backpack, while I realise that I have a childlike smile on my face.

I start to move uphill, sinking into, almost wounding, the new white skin of the meadow with my slow pace. Silence smells like snow melting on my face.

But between one step and another I feel as though a simple elegy were rising upwards from below and wrapping itself around my legs.

I climb as far as the top of the old ski slope, which has been unused for years. The skilift cannot even be seen among the flakes, but, just below the first houses of the village, numerous children with sledges are playing joyously under the calm eyes of their parents.

The piste is almost unrecognisable. Since it is no longer groomed, it has widened its borders to embrace all the meadows around and, spreading, it arrives right beneath the tall firs. I step onto my board and go down on the first untouched snow of the year, without even a sound. I open my arms. The snow makes it almost impossible to see and the dips in the snow are discovered by the knees before they are by the eyes.

“Let yourself go without thinking”, I say to myself. “Let yourself be carried by the falling snow, which cradles your face and points your feet. Let yourself be carried in its sweet weight to the end of the valley”, the lullaby continues to whisper.

But the strong firs bar my passage. I have to remove the snowboard and start to climb again with the snowshoes I carry on my backpack. The old piste is not long, but wants to play its own part today.

I take the steepest slope, straight up, almost to challenge it. And it laughs, snowing.

I hear the cries of the children again, and can make out the village. I descend again, faster and surer, turn left and enter the woods, then with a little jump I land on a flat area surrounded by bare trunks.

Again I hear that that monotonous elegy rising in the silence, I look around. Only ancient firs and imperious larches dare to challenge the snow. I, small, set off uphill again. Now I’m sweating and full of wet snow. Another descent, and another climb. Like in the old days, deserving every metre that is skied. Giving dignity to an old piste that awaits patiently.

My breath becomes laboured at the fourth climb and on fixing my feet to the snowboard, the elegy sounds stronger.

Any view around is almost gone as the snow continues to fall. The footprints disappear between one ascent and another and there is no border between horizon and sky.

I go down for the last time. I listen out but the elegy chases me between the white flakes and beneath the branches under which I duck. Until I still arrive at the low area surrounded by firs.

I sit tired in the snow and finally listen.

“Now you know who I am, now you know why, how large is my embrace, how strong my pride of earth, fearless and tender. For long time have I waited for snow, for long have I dreamed of children's games and daring skiers. I have waited a long time. Today I can finally sing because I have been answered. Again I have been able to open my white sheet to make little and grown-up children play, to make their anxieties vanish in my humid air and recall a time without suffering. I am an old abandoned ski trail. I am the memory of a village of strong and courageous men. I am the emblem of a land that awaits. And that amazes without asking anything”