Italy
Turning hairpin 48 of Passo dello Stelvio and leaving the highest pass in the Eastern Alps to follow a gentle river, the vast valley opened into a world of bright greens imprisoned between the enormous grey mountains I’d been cycling over. Freewheeling through quaint villages under a blue sky, between piercing steeples and wooden cottages, every photograph was a postcard. However, no picture seemed to capture the moment and I struggled to understand why. The world was so wonderful but my photos were boring and the pictures that others took seemed so perfect.
Suddenly, turning a corner, I cycled into an artist’s wonderland. Laying Dolly on the orange dirt I walked tentatively around the outdoor gallery. In this Technicolor world, hundreds of brightly coloured faces stared at me from totem poles and rocks. Robotic forms walked hand in hand with the limp limbs of animal remains, and pebbles hung like pendulums from oil drums.
He Who Speaks with the Voice of the Wind
I stepped further into the maze when I heard a call from the creator of this magical world, “Hallo?” then, “Deutsch, Italiano, Francais, English?” “English” I replied, “a beautiful language, though I don’t speak very well, I learnt for only one year”, he replied in perfect English. I asked his name, “I call myself He Who Speaks with the Voice of the Wind.”
Wearing a small pair of shorts and a straw hat from which two feathers hung down the back of his neck, he stood barefoot on the dirt, his deep blue eyes piercing my own as he spoke to me through a thin grey beard. “The voices of the American Indian spirits speak to me,” his voice was relaxed and thoughtful, explaining the creation of this bizarre land. He talked about Native American beliefs, the necessity of both good and bad, the need to live in harmony with the earth, to exist without striving for material possessions, and made comparisons to modern Western living.
You Can’t Keep the Moment
My eyes opened and I nodded and smiled, agreeing with everything he was saying, entranced by his words. “Yes, I believe the same, I’ve given up everything I had, now all I own is what I have on my bike, I sleep under the stars and I’m cycling around the world,” I told him. He looked me up and down, pointed at my camera and exhaled. “When the white man went to America, he took all that he could and gave nothing back” he said. “He cut down the trees for wood, he killed the animals for meat and fur, and he takes the oil from the planet. And for what? Money. Greed. Why do you take photographs? You want to keep that moment, it’s greed. You can’t keep the moment; once it’s passed, it is gone. The moments pass, like the water continues to flow and the wind will continue to blow. But they make us who we are, we change and grow.” He picked an ant from the ground, tore it in half and ate it giving me time to digest.
Why was I taking pictures? For the last month I’d photographed every piece of evidence, accumulating hundreds of photos of the world I passed through. But what did my collection of photos prove? What was I trying to capture? My brain ached as I searched for an answer… Emotion, that was it. The freedom of being on the road, the knee crunching climbs and the joyful descents, the excitement of life without limits. That something I couldn’t photograph, although I consumed myself trying. “I understand!” I said, explaining what he’d helped me to realise. But barely finishing my excited rambling he calmly began his second revelation.
Be Who You Are
He walked me to his car, on which, he’d painted ‘be who you are’ and on the other side ‘I am me’. “Do you understand?” he asked, “I think so”, I replied. He explained, “If a student goes to music school wanting to become the next Mozart, he will only come out disappointed. The student may learn to play Mozart’s songs, but he will not see through Mozart’s eyes. We all see things differently. When I look around, maybe I see the grass and the trees, and in the same place you see the birds.” A smile spread across my face; comparing myself to others and those I thought were better than me was pointless.
“It’s my dinner time, I normally charge one euro for taking pictures here,” said He Who Speaks with the Voice of the Wind. I pulled my hands from my pockets and examined my change, by the time I looked up he was on the other side of the road, walking away. I laughed, picked up Dolly and rejoined the road. After ten minutes of cycling in the wrong direction, I turned around and coasted to the nearest roadside spring to splash my face with ice cold water.
