i’m sitting in a small mountain hut in the italian alps, just a stone’s throw across the austrian border.
the hut is called munt de sennes, and it is a rifugio – a mountain hut – for travelers through-hiking the dolomites, with hot showers and hot meals and a friendly hutkeeper who helps me hang my clothes to dry by the fire inside.
i had arrived earlier in the afternoon after a 5 hour trek from lago di braes, through rolling green hills and the gray, white-flecked dolomite rocks that gifted this mountain range its name. it is my first day on the alta via 1 trail, where i’ll be hiking fifty-some kilometers over the next few days.
in the rifugio kitchen i take a seat next to a middle-aged german lady. andrea is a physicist from a small town just outside of dresden, and over the span of two hours, three hot chocolates and a salami sandwich i listen to andrea talk about particle colliders and detectors and atoms and other things i know nothing about. when i ask her about the collider at her university, andrea’s back straightens and her stutter all but disappears. as she talks i feel as if i am truly seeing her, her true self, that had perhaps initially hidden away in the presence of this stranger from hong kong, but is now rising into the fold.
though i barely passed physics in high school and don’t understand half of the words she is using, andrea’s passion for the subject filters through to me, a hand reaching out across the abyss. i wonder at all the things i don’t know about our universe, will never know. a world of particle colliders, of fantastic measuring machines, of bits of energy too small for the mind to comprehend.
does it really matter if i don’t fully understand? what does matter, i think, is the sharing – her passion, my curiosity. to hear the heartbeat of someone’s inner world: what a privilege. a boy from halfway across the world sits down next to a german physicist and from this encounter is born a kind of kindred love.
perhaps that is the wonder of nature, the long multi-day treks through mountains with no service and no wifi. nothing to pay attention to at the end of the day except the grass and the people around me, the hutkeeper’s husband walking by with a chicken in his hands, the german physicist telling me about how colliders can simulate the original big bang.
the presence of focus, of spending a day by myself, in nature, and then coming into the rifugio in the afternoons rejuvenated, richer, the edges of my solitude softened by a day amongst trees and lakes and mountains. ready for a beer, ready to talk and examine and discover other people’s lives.
andrea retires to her room for a nap, and i continue sitting alone in the kitchen area as other hikers and travelers make their way into the hut for the evening. i have my journal and a book of poems with me, perhaps all i could want on a trek like this. when letters and alphabet become meaningless forms in my head, i rest my cheek in one hand and admire the mountain views painted across the windows along the rifugio walls.
small storms arrive, here and there. a spanish man maybe a few years older than me blows through the heavy wooden door, speaking in a smatter of broken german and even worse english. he is picking up a package for his friend; the hutkeeper tells him to sit down and brings him a plate of cheese while she checks the back room.
looking around the room bewilderedly as if not expecting to spend more than a few seconds inside, the man spots me and excitedly puts his pack down across from my table. he speaks spanish to me, and though yo no hablo espanol i see the friendliness radiating in his face – and when the hutkeeper arrives with the cheese he wants me to try some of it, and it is delicious. for the next 15 minutes we attempt a conversation over this cheese, spanish from one side, english on the other, about the cheese, how it’s so good, rico!, double thumbs-up – and it is fun and rewarding for us to attempt this communication.
when the hutkeeper comes back with a cardboard box in her hands i am slightly sad that the spaniard has to go. we give each other a warm hug of farewell. adios, amigo, i salute. bye, bro! he says, smiling, waving out the door with one hand and the box in the other until he almost trips on a loose flagstone. i know i will never see him again, and i wish him all the happiness in the world, and more.
it’s dinnertime, now, the dusk fading into midnight blue, and i am still sitting at the same light-wooden table in one corner of the kitchen. i watch a beautiful austrian couple play cards at the next table over.
the two stare mischievously at one another, smiles like wildflowers by a mountain stream, and i look up as she suddenly exclaims and there he sits with his hand of cards spread out in front of him. a victorious grin on his face: cocky but gentle. she cusses in german and pinches him on the cheeks.
then i watch as they tilt their heads and look at one another the way two flowers angle towards one another under the sun. there is so much love in their eyes that i can feel it, easy and tender, pushing through my bones from five feet away. their love balloons across the room as it envelops me, around the other guests sitting at their tables, through the wooden walls of the hut, and to the cows and goats and chickens tutting away outside, under the stars.
i wonder if andrea would see the couple and think of two particles, colliding, sparks flying across the rifugio – and whether she would attempt to explain their love with physics or science. maybe she would say something about how things can become larger than the sum of their parts. or, perhaps, she would refer to the second law of thermodynamics: entropy always increases, and perhaps that is not such a bad thing after all.
love… it blooms, i whisper softly to myself. it is blooming in the laughter of strangers, in the quiet conversations, in the rhythm of my trailworn steps through these mountains. love is alive, here, growing, unfolding, constantly. i had thought i only witnessed a moment of spring, but i think it is always here, an eternal, endless season.
love: it is always here. all i need to do is open my eyes to see it, spread my arms to receive it.
🇵🇭 life updates:
🌊 i’m two months into a three-month stay in the philippines, where i’ve entered full-hermit-mode to focus on writing my book + surfing.
✍️ i’m at 120+ pages and counting. the goal is to finish the book before i leave.
🧪 i recently launched EXPERIMENT, a 4-week creative residency in vietnam. come spend 4 weeks in da nang with us this winter.
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bravo Kora!
Poetic and beautiful, as always!