We hang out in the spring. There are wildflowers everywhere, fields of them swaying gently, the river like aquamarine flowing over the white limestone rock. The daughter and I take the pathway up the back of the house, up a very steep hill.
In all the 30 plus years of coming here, I've never walked there. I was always hanging out ready to leave, to visit other places in the short time that we would holiday in Italy. The pathway affords incredible views of the lake, the mountains and comes back around via the gelateria in the town. We sit with the old ones and consume our gelato and go down to sit by the lake to listen to the water flowing over the rocks, to watch the swallows flit and skim over the water.
This is the time of year that the wood sculptors come to town. They set up workshops along the streets and in the squares and create works of art during a few days. Every day we wander down to check the progress. The village comes alive. When my late husband was around, he would hang out most of the day with the sculptors, getting to know them all, watching them at work. As a tree lopper, he had a passion for wood and his dream was to retire one day and sculpt and create things of beauty out of the wood that he had collected over the years. It was not to be. A reminder to all of us to do the things we want to do and not to wait.
At night, the large dominant mountain that defines Auronzo, that I once felt overpowering, becomes a beacon that showcases the sun's path towards it and it's disappearance behind it, casting patterns of golden rose tinted light stratified across the blue grey peaks.
Often rainbows hover over it and the last deep fissures of snow glint metallic copper in the last rays of day. I finally see why my husband fell in love with his family's hometown when he arrived here from Australia at the age of thirteen. Upon returning to Australia, every year he made the trip back to see his family and breathe in the mountain air. This time, I have given myself the time to fuse with it's wild beauty, it's delicate wildflowers, it's ice cold streams and I've finally found purchase here. Maybe a part of my husband's soul has flowed into me and I see it as he did and I'm finally at peace here.
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