Jump

Day seven, Italy. I arrived at Lake Garda yesterday, at the Casa nel Parco near Prabione, five hundred metres up in the hills. The second battery charges while I drive, and the solar panel does its part. I worked online in the morning. At two I go walking with Manoel, who runs the place, and his son.

I don't know it yet, but today is the day.

We are heading down to Campione del Garda, an hour on foot. First a narrow road, then a track through the woods. The path turns to stone and I am wearing smooth shoes, so I have to go down into my knees and pick my way across the loose pieces like something that isn't quite a person any more.

Thomas, Manoel's son, says goodbye at the top. Too much for today. A hundred and fifty years ago, when there was still a cotton mill down in Campione, the women of Prabione walked this path four times a day to get to work. Every season. Every kind of weather.

The path gets steeper and runs along the cliffs. We are close to climbing now. „Everything that's beautiful is forbidden,“ Manoel says, and points at a sign warning of flood waves from the dam above the gorge. We walk past the sign and hold on to a rope on the left, because on the right the edge goes down a long way.

Then we stop. The waterfall comes over smooth rock into a pool so clear you can see how deep it is, and the pool spills on down the mountain without hurrying.

Manoel goes left. We leave the rock behind, climb over boulders, wade through water cold enough to make the bones ache. Another pool. Small basins. More rock. I move like a gecko to keep the smooth shoes on the stone, and I am enjoying myself more than I have in years.

At the end of the gorge we look up. I wonder whether anyone standing at the top could see us, and decide we would look like toys.

I get ready to jump.

„It's deep enough,“ says Manoel. „Jump.“

I go over the lip into blue water. It is ice cold and it burns like light. I am afraid of the depth under my kicking feet, the way you are afraid of a room with the lamp off.

Then I come up, and I am someone else, and nobody watching would have been able to tell.