For Tom

The black grouse lek is convenient, just a ten-minute walk from where I parked the car. It is the middle of the night, it is snowing, and there is fog. I hoist my backpack onto my shoulders, sling the hide over one shoulder, and carry the chair in one hand. I walk in snowshoes, following a track barely visible beneath the wet, heavy snow that is falling. The beam of my headlamp creates a strange effect—streaks of light and smoke against a white background. I look around. I am alone this morning, and that is a blessing, even if there is always the fear that some careless person might arrive at first light, right in the middle of the lek. That would cause chaos: the grouse would flee, and some of the hens would probably not be mated, jeopardizing the nesting season. Wildlife photography is serious business, solitary work where you never quite know whom to trust. Jealousy runs high, and envy even higher. Is it really impossible to enjoy another photographer’s success? After all, we all share the same fire burning inside us: a passion for nature, curiosity, and the desire to be amazed. Well—not everyone. Some move only with the hunter’s instinct, just to add another species to their collection, without being able to tell the story behind the animal. You need to know how to tell a story, yes, but also how to read what the mountain and nature reveal in their book made of leaves, scents, and sounds. I open the hide. Everything is silent, apart from a few light gusts of wind. I take out the snow pegs and secure the fabric hide to the ground, then throw over it a camouflage blanket made especially for photography. A green patch in the middle of a complete whiteout—will I manage to fool the grouse? I crawl inside, place the plaid over my legs, position the tripod and the camera. It is 4:00 in the morning. Everything is still. Or so it seems. In reality, nature never sleeps. The first time you walk in the dark, everything scares you: the starry sky that seems as if it might fall at any moment, the noises, the rain. Everything frightens us because our senses are addicted to light, always and everywhere. We are no longer used to darkness, and yet darkness is a comfort for so many animal species. I wrap myself in the blanket while waiting for the grouse to arrive in the lek. In those moments you are truly alone, especially if outside there is darkness, fog, and snow, and in those conditions the mind wanders. It wanders to other hides, to the problems you left down in the valley, to the next work shift, and to the friends with whom you shared walks in search of wild animals. One of those friends, a few months ago, continued his journey on the high plateaus of the Most High. And he is missed. We only met in person twice, and my regret is that I never managed to bring him onto my mountains. He was Piemontese by adoption, Lombard by birth, from that part of Lombardy lying beneath the Alps. But we wrote and spoke often. He knew how to make himself heard exactly when it was most needed and least expected, like a mountain spirit. He spoke little and calmly, weighing every word, the perfect counterbalance to my youthful exuberance. I do not know what struck him about me—perhaps my still-immature early-career photographs uploaded to a photography website—but I do know that I earned his trust, and that was a great privilege. Silence. It is 4:40, and in the distance I hear the whistles of the grouse. They are arriving. My heart starts pounding, but I still have to remain motionless. The light is too weak, and the fog makes things difficult for the camera. I wait and look out from the hide. In the faint light of dawn, the black shapes of the grouse begin to appear. One stands out against the wall of fog, jumps, and begins to bubble and call. Another flies right over the hide and settles to one side, where I had not expected it to land. The sun starts to glow behind the clouds, the light improves, and so do my camera settings. Then, from behind a ridge, a hen appears, and immediately two males raise their chests to compete for her. They fight fiercely while the hen slowly slips away. It is 6:40. Sleep is beginning to weigh on me, and on the nearby road the first cars of the workers pass by, while the fog begins to thin. The grouse song starts to fade; only one remains, higher up. I center him in the camera viewfinder, the gimbal free. At a certain point he takes off. I follow him. Six or seven shots—four out of focus, three sharp, and one perfectly sharp, with the grouse in flight and its wings spread, showing the white feathers on the underside. How long I had wanted this photograph. 7:30 in the morning. Nothing can be heard anymore, except for a woodpecker drumming on a trunk down in the valley. I crawl out of the hide stiff and aching, and the cold makes me desperate to pee. I begin dismantling my setup to return to the car. 8:00. I am sitting in the car, thirsty and hungry, asking the engine to blow hot air at me to chase away the cold of this high-altitude spring, while I look through the photographs. It has been a good session. I saw a lot, and the camera did its job well. But inside me something is missing—not a habit, but a relationship that has been cut short. This time I will not be able to send the photographs to Tom. He is gone, and I will not receive his dry reply of just a few words, always ending with the invitation to keep sending him my shots. No envy, no jealousy—only the desire to enjoy nature through someone else’s point of view as well. Tom and I met in person only twice, but that was enough for me to consider him a true friend: straightforward, simple, like the mountains we both loved, in a complicated world made of envy and things that cannot be said. What I still have left of Tom are his photographs on my phone, two fingers of gentian grappa with amaretto, and the recipe for Serpoul. And surely, this summer, when I prepare it, it will carry another meaning: do not forget.