A sense of community and future will save our mountains

The mountain is an extended plural, it is peaks like castles, forests of peace, expansive pastures and it belongs to everyone. This is why Marco Albino Ferrari, a great connoisseur of peaks and their dynamics, has written The Mountain We Want. A manifesto. Because the mountain is the plural of all and on which to make plans: 'The mountains of abandonment should no longer be viewed with benevolence and resignation as if they were a passive trailer, to be assisted. No, we must change our point of view because within that dormant world lies in power (sometimes already expressed) an idea of the future ready to blossom. And it is not only the mountains that will benefit, but the whole country, the plains, the cities.

It is enough to stand in the shadow of the three thousand-year-old larches in Val d'Ultimo, the three oldest conifers in Europe, 'the apotheosis and glorification of the plant kingdom that has been perpetuating itself for two thousand years', to feel the responsibility of an equally grandiose future to be written. Those larches, in Roman times, were a fraction of a gram, nothing more than seeds, like those that grow from the pine cones delivered from Val di Fiemme to the Biodiversity Centre in Peri (Verona). Here they extract the seeds, carry out desalting, perform germinability tests and store the batches in cold rooms, then ship the bag: 2.5 kilos for forty thousand spruce seedlings. Seventy per cent of the seeds become trees, each tree costs 15 euros from the harvesting of the pine cones to the planting of the seedlings, and the economic return will be 80 years from now. An eternity for our hectic society, but if there is a sense of community, as there is in the Magnifica Comunità di Fiemme, the wait is a breath of fresh air: being part of the community means 'feeling indebted for the inheritance received from the past; and it is here that the drive to invest in tomorrow is born'. The highlands, which in Italy account for 50 per cent of the surface area, go beyond the 'postcards of the playful mountain, with their snow-covered ski slopes, alpine refuges (now starred), and large forests where the spirit of wilderness hovers as in a slice of our own Alaska'.

The highlands need care, new care to best express their precious peculiarities. Courage and vision are needed. Starting with wood. Italy boasts one of the most important wood manufacturing industries (for furniture and construction) in the world; it has more forest area than any other European country; it has the lowest average harvest rate per hectare in Europe; and it imports 80% of the wood material it needs. How is this possible? There are, however, shining examples of mountains full of the future, driven by a sense of belonging that - Ferrari explains - must change to really make an impact: we must look to a hybrid and progressive form of community, 'based on reason rather than tradition. A community that legitimises itself not through its own traditional foundation, but in the management of a pooled good'. One example is the 'chains' of franchised shops in small mountain villages, along the lines of what happens in Yorkshire, England, or the community cooperative Valle dei Cavalieri. They set themselves goals: they found the funds to open the bar, then the small shop, the restaurant on the premises of the closed school and a small hotel; in 1998, sheep breeding and the production of pecorino cheese began, and in 2003, the visitor centre of the National Park of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines became operational. In France, the 1000 Cafés project is a modern community; 221 have been created and are multi-service cafés in small isolated villages.

In order to live, the mountains need services, shops (with State support for start-up), and a tailor-made bureaucracy, which, for example, facilitates land consolidation, building renovation and discourages land consumption. And in order to design the future of mountain areas, it is necessary to consider 'their specificity in continuity with their surroundings, mountains must be observed as part of a whole that encompasses everything. Both in time and in space'. Certainly, technology is a concrete option for moving creative and innovative work to the mountains, in a sort of 'proximity delocalisation'. Another mountain is possible, made up of a return to wood, the recovery of abandoned buildings, eco-compatible renovations, forest regeneration thanks to naturalistic silviculture plans, and with the economic and recreational spin-off that it can provide: "These are not chimeras and scenarios supported by some excess of ideality, far removed from reality: the mountains can truly provide an answer to the great transformations that our time imposes on us in terms of respect for the environment and quality of life. Seizing the opportunity is up to us'. After all, 80 years is either a lot or a whisker depending on the perspective from which one looks at it.

Marco Albino Ferrari, La montagna che vogliamo. Un manifesto, Einaudi, pp. 144, € 13