A few October days (and nights) of merry wandering through the famous Dolomites, where life seems to be but a dream and the world resembles a giant burlesque playground, a photographer's theme park.
About a century ago, the Great War went literally crazy here. The sublime landscape was decorated by fortresses, digs and artillery batteries. Mining warfare rumbled like a furious herd of rabid moles far and wide through the hills and cliffs, with the rivals trying to blow each other up all around, inventing ingenious ways to utter failure fueled by the glyceryl trinitrate.
On both sides of the front the leader's hubris was immense enough to consider dropping a controlled avalanche on enemy positions, killing about ten thousand people during the December 1916 alone. In the end, after three years of foolish violence the war efforts on the Dolomite part of the Italian front resuted in a hopeless deadlock.
Standing on the top of the cliffs of Kleiner Lagazuoi high above Falzarego and Valparola passes, it's remarkably hard to believe such a folly occured here four or five generations ago. It feels utterly bizarre to consider that the graceful Cinque Torri deep bellow us hosted an Italian battery shelling the Austro-Hungarians entrenched here on the top of the mountain. The ancient rocks remain tranquil, unmoved, concealing what they had to endure, perhaps aware of the ephemeral nature of the human time frame.
Standing on the peak of Monte Mondeval opposite the gigantic towering rock of Pelmo, with the glittering Marmolada glacier to the right, one cannot help but feel we are just passing by.
Afore the winter, through the Dolomites.
(Photographed in October 2019)
