DREAMS AND TIME

I come from the seaside and since I was born I have only been involved in water-sports. However, when I was 23 I (re-)discovered the mountains. It was after a dream trip in Morocco where I befriended a crazy girl, a mountain enthusiast, who was in love with snowboarding and climbing. During the whole trip she fueled my imagination with dreams of the mountains and the strong emotions related to her adventures.

After I returned home I immediately delved into my next big adventure, one that has turned into a long-lasting passion and a lifestyle: climbing. My mom wasn’t surprised, she reminded me that as a child when my family would go to the mountains, despite the other children's lack of interest or complaints, I was in love with alpine trekking; the long approach to the mountain walls... and I was only 4 years old.

I can’t recall those treks as a 4-year old but, I can still recall the first time I went climbing in my early twenties. My fingers grazed rock with a new found excitement, reading the intricate details in the stone, seeking out holds, and pockets. I was filled with adrenaline, I was inspired, and okay yes, I was scared but, it all fueled my love for the sport. I was hooked!

From those first moments climbing captured my heart, and my dreams turned to the highest peaks - starting with the Dolomites in my home country and moving on to the Alps, the Himalayas... maybe Everest. But will this only be a dream, something I queue up in my imagination when I think about the maybe-one-days? I’ve always known it would take more than dreaming though to make it a reality; it would require effort, energy, and training.

But sometime other aspects of our lives, what so many of us call the reality, take a firm grasp and make our dreams feel so far away; maybe just at our fingertips but still out of reach. This reality left me still training, and working hard to progress but I was sport climbing and I was in the gym not in the mountains where my dreams lived.

Last summer though, I got back into the mountains. I climbed the Tre Cime of the Dolomites and discovered again the starting point of my dream - Alpine Climbing! Oh the Beauty! There is no better way to see the Dolomites than from above, to truly appreciate this myriad of summits strewn across a vast, beautiful, and peaceful landscape. I was inspired and more than ever I was re-motivated.

The clock goest fast though. Sometimes as humans we run full force into our job and forget about all these dreams. But for me Salewa entered my life and I returned to the Dolomites to live. In this environment I hope to push myself beyond the limits in my mind and achieve at least as many peaks as I can in my backyard, and enjoy the energy and power that nature provides to my spirit.

So here I am, setting new goals to accompany the old. In the summer of 2018 I will challenge myself with a peak that is a mix between climbing and hiking, the Dolomites’ Tofana di Rozes which rises 1,200m from the trailhead and requires climbing an exposed rock face. Then I plan to go back to the Tre Cime and climb the other face. And in 2019 the dream is Monte Rosa. All of this cannot come without a focus on training, climbing, running, hiking, fitting in work, and then repeat. For me this is the life I want to live though; catch the dreams and be on-time before it’s too late and my tired feet are back in the sand at the seaside. Because as Napolean Hill says, “The starting point of all achievement is desire.”.

Antonella is E-Commerce & Digital Marketing Manager at Salewa in Bolzano, Italy