Go, even for just a few minutes from the refuge, The Hawthorn, is a mystical experience.
We are in Plans for the Carmelia, one of the many “plans” that characterize the morphology of the Aspromonte.
This is our starting point for the hike will take us up to the top of Mount Fistocchio.
The managers of the refuge, Antonio and Teresa, welcome us as always with the heat, helping with the final preparations before getting in the way. The horses are at rest in their stables, the hens feel barely clucking in the distance, but the true wonder is Daisy, the deer recovered and entrusted to the care of these lovers of the mountain, which follows as a shadow, her four-legged friend, Achilles, the big white dog, the true master of the place, which, in turn, passes through us sleepy, almost to make sure that we take off soon by the foot.
Leave all of this behind us a little bit of effort, but taken everything from our cars, we are finally ready to go.
The air is still sweet, even though we are in mid-April, and someone considers it wise to keep a cap support, especially in the absence of a budget trichological natural... Arrived on the street partially paved that will lead us to the junction with the provincial road and immediately to the so-called Via delle Fontanelle, spring warns us that came here, at 1300 m above sea level, with a yellow bloom of daffodils to the side of the road.
The cheery voices of the boys of the group portends a day that is anything but quiet, but turns out to be a symptom of great interest and curiosity.
We are now on Via delle Fontanelle, a dirt road through a forest of beech, pine and young spruce and takes its name from the numerous water sources on the route. A keen eye will perceive the change that is taking place, but that will still take a few decades to be complete. Is the changing of the wood in the forest, that the natural succession of tree species that make nature so wonderful and efficient.
A group of cyclists reaches us, someone stops to have a chat, someone else will let go to maneuver a little too reckless in taking some (well-deserved) Italian contexts.
All are intent on photographing the streams that cross the track regardless of the intervention of man or the delicate hues that the sun causes filtering through the young green leaves of the beech trees. You create a memory, capture a moment that remains unforgettable.
And here we are again on the asphalt, even for a bit. Is the road, from Montalto, the gate of San Luca, one of the municipalities with the larger territory in Aspromonte. Follow the road for a stretch, a few more bends, a straight, slightly uphill, the trees by the shapes of the strange and here is the sign that indicates the diversion to the coveted top. From the road off a wide track, this period is dotted with tiny white flowers, it's like walking inside the drawing of a child. The tufts of green grass, the dark earth and the grey rocks complete the harmony of the delicate colors of Fistocchio. Or Pistocchìo, as they say, the people of that place. It seems that the cartographers of piedmont, after the unity of Italy, they had a lot to do to transcribe the place names of aspromonte on their cards, stravolgendoli, sometimes in part, sometimes completely.
Someone puffs for the steep climb, someone else teases punzecchiandolo with a stick and threatening to cause an avalanche of human down to the foot of the mountain. But, in the end, here we are. The sky is now crossed by a thin veil of moisture, but the view is good. From the top we can see the Tyrrhenian sea, on the one hand, with the Plain of Gioia Tauro and the myriad of countries that make up this chaotic chess board in perfect equilibrium with nature.
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