The mountains of blue water

The Dolomites illuminated by the blue of distance. Pic/Rosalyn D’Mello

Because marvellous weather was forecast for Sunday, we decided to spend the day outdoors. Indeed, it was among the most spectacular blue-skied, sunny autumn days I had ever beheld. We drove to Rodenecker Alm, near Brixen, in Northern Italy, which, because of its advantageously located terrain, offers incredible panoramic views of the Eisack Valley and the Dolomites. It was a different kind of awe than what one experiences in Venice, from the continuous play of sky light upon water, the liquid reflections of the city's architecture, and the casual chancing upon major and minor spectacles - a church façade, a square, or a sweeping view of the sun setting or the moon rising. Once we'd parked and set forth on the trail, we were securely amidst nature, walking through forests and meadows, all the while surrounded by panoramic views.

Ever since I copyedited a manuscript which included a text by the scholar, Ulrike Kindl, about how the Dolomites were essentially water that became stone, or rather, coral reefs that grew upwards and gradually became mountains, my sense of wonder at the sight of them has grown even more exponentially. They were always fascinating to witness as geological entities, their materiality so distinct, you could spot the stone with ease. I learned that the time of their coral formation dates to the Triassic period of the Mesozoic era, about 252 to 66 million years ago. Originally limestone barriers that grew in the sea, forming a labyrinthine shape, the mountains apparently don't have ridgelines, and are composed of a special lime that is not calcium carbonate but magnesium carbonate.

French geologist Dolomieu is credited with having described it for the first time, and his name has now become synonymous with the mountains. It was when the Alps folded up, because of the rubbing of plate tectonics, that the Dolomites got lifted up. Somehow, learning this background through Kindl's oral recounting of it offered a prism through which to better understand the landscape that has become my home.

There are moments when the sunlight illuminates all the jagged peaks of the Dolomite ranges and they feel bathed in a kind of solemnity. You are reminded of all this existence that precedes your own, to which you are bound through other-than-human life forms, like fossils that bear traces of the animals that inhabited these terrains long before you.

Arriving at the Astjoch, one of the many peaks in the vicinity, I felt humbled by the panoramic view. The last stretch was rocky and I felt tired from the climb, but once atop, I was unsure what to fix my gaze upon. I lay down and closed my eyes for a bit in order to locate my body within the spectacle. When I'd reopen them I always felt a sense of surprise and even intrigue at the sighting of the Dolomites. I thought of the excerpt from Rebecca Solnit's poetic treatise, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, in which she speaks of the ‘blue of distance', which I had included as part of the poetry reading I had coordinated for the participants of the workshop I was conducting. "The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colourless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the colour blue."

Up in the mountains the sun was still visible, but as we returned to the valley we could see the last stretches of light fading into twilight. I saw Jupiter announce itself and I thought about how much time it must have taken for its illumination to arrive within the periphery of our eyesight, our gaze, and wondered if this was a cosmic example of what Sheila Heti's protagonist in Motherhood refers to as ‘the soul of time'. The waning moon stood resplendently in the cloudless sky. I tried to freeze for myself this moment of autumnal retreat - the incandescent reds and yellows that had taken over the mountains, the abundance of fallen leaves collecting on the ground that will, eventually, become soil, and the significant drop in temperature once the sun disappeared into the horizon.

On Wednesday, we began the Pink Lady harvest. It was, I realised, my third time helping and my fingers already felt attuned to the gestures. I have been seasoned by mountains, rivers, glaciers, and valleys, and I've never before felt such an astonishing aspiration to belong.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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