They say the world has lost some of its colour.
And yet, there are young people, women and men, who have chosen to live life in full colour.
Martino. Luca. Juri.
Daniela. Vanessa. Daniel.
The light - gold, azure, cobalt blue, indigo, violet - of a clear mountain sky.
The white - of clouds, rock, milk.
The roughness - of a cow’s coat, a wooden table, benches warmed by the sun.
The dampness - of high-altitude pastures.
The taste - of milk turned into cheese.
The tiredness - in legs, hands, eyes.
Red. Tobacco. Spotted. Pale.
Here, summer is measured in sunrises, milkings, hours spent grazing.
In the Alpine pastures around the Brenta Dolomites, on high plateaus opening out beyond narrow, rugged valleys, the world has not lost its colour.
Here, summer is measured in sunrises, milkings, hours spent grazing, wheels of cheese to shape and turn. A power cut. A leaking pipe. A cow that wanders off. In days that start early and end only when there is nothing left that needs doing.
But that is only the part you can see.
Then there are the choices.
But that is only the part you can see.
The choice of those who return up here every summer. Of those barely in their twenties who have decided that this work is their future. Of those who share the same malga with their family. Of those who know every animal by name, temperament and habit.
We met some of them and simply let them tell us what it means to live up here.
Without looking for one single answer.
Because perhaps life in a malga doesn’t need to be explained. Nor does it need to be romanticised.
It needs to be listened to: in the gestures repeated day after day, in the words of those who have chosen this life, in the quiet moments between one task and the next.
And in the colours that, up there, somehow still seem to have a name.
