Memories of Elsewhere: Plateau of the Sun, by Sara Bellini

In these times when many of us are staying very close to home, we have invited Elsewhere contributors to reflect on those places that we cannot reach and yet which occupy our minds…

By Sara Bellini: 

The first thing I think about is the rain. The sound of a summer storm beyond the window pane just before going to bed, no other noise in the room. And then the petrichor, the smell of water on the grass slope behind the house the morning after, the earth still dark in the daylight. The first thing I think about when I think about the mountains is heavy rain on a summer night.

I cannot tell exactly when we stopped going to my grandma’s holiday home in the mountains. It must have been sometime before my teens, after my grandpa died, but I can say I went there every summer during my childhood from when I was six months old. My mum’s mum lives down in the valley, half an hour by car, and used to spend the whole summer there when the weather got too warm. My mum and I, and later my little brother, would join her, my grandpa and his sister (and the occasional guests) for a few weeks.

The second thing I think about is the smell of the pine cones burning in the little wood burner in the bathroom, their soothing crackling keeping me company during the shower, the stove’s warmth cosy and earthy. The pine cones and kindling were fetched during trips to the nearby woods, usually by my grandma and her sister-in-law (her partner in crime), both wearing skirts and comfy old-fashioned shoes. 

My grandparents’ holiday home was at the edge of a village on what is called the Plateau of the Sun, right behind Monte Altissimo, the mountain visible from my grandparents’ kitchen. They bought the house when my mum and aunt were in their teens and used it mostly during the warm season. The garage on the side was added later, and the old one on the ground floor was turned into a spacious kitchen/dining room/living room. I remember opening the house for the season, the big heavy key turning into the glass door and behind it a wall of peaceful darkness, heavy with the smell of wood panelling and sofas and cold stone fireplace.

The third thing I think about is the food. Like any Italian woman that had grown up during the war, my grandma’s main concern was that we were all well-fed, and happily fed too. This idea practically translated into all of her signature dishes: homemade lasagne, polenta with mountain cheese, pasta fresca with ceps, risotto... We would get fresh bread from the little stone bakery every day, and ice cream from the gelateria on the main street. And then of course there were the blueberries and mushrooms we picked in the woods, and ice-cold water magically pouring out from the mountain side. My own idea of a mountainscape is located very precisely in those experiences and in those places. Even now whenever I enter a forest my sensorial memory unleashes images of my childhood there: smells of pine trees, wet soil and wild strawberries.

My mum told me that one of the first solid foods I had were grapes. Once when we were on holiday in the mountains and I was about one year old I disappeared and everyone searched the whole house and went as far as the street looking for me. They found me quietly sitting inside a kitchen cupboard enjoying some grapes. I was too little to remember this, but my mum and my grandma have told the story so many times that I consider it a memory. And it’s the same with the many photos of me taken there in my early years: holding my great-uncle’s hand, playing with fresh mushrooms picked by my mum’s cousin, sitting on the dining room table while entertaining the grown-ups.

The fourth thing I think about is the old deck of Trevisane we used for the card games: briscola, scopa, Marianna. It had been handled so many times that the cards were almost soft, their laminated slipperiness worn away by time. We would all play – me, my mum, my grandma, my great-aunt and the regular guests. That’s what we would do on rainy afternoons or after dinner, for hours, chuckling and strategising. We were never bored. I think that’s where we got the habit of playing cards after eating, and even now, in the rare occasions when I see my mum or my grandma, it feels like a deeply familiar thing to do. 

A few years ago my aunt mentioned in passing that my grandma had sold the house in the mountains. My mum had probably forgotten to tell me. My grandma was just too old to be there by herself and all her holiday companions were dead. I hadn’t been there in a decade, but I was utterly shocked at the realisation that the possibility to go there was lost forever. And after the first instinctive shock came a second one when I thought how it must have felt for her to touch every familiar object and have to decide on its fate, to disassemble each room piece by piece, one memory at a time, and then leave the house for good.

When I think about the wooden house in the mountains I think about family and home. When I think about the mountain I think about my grandma.

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Sara Bellini is an editor of Elsewhere: A Journal of Place. She lives in Berlin, the place she calls home at the moment.