What a place to see a
snowstorm from! and what a place from which to survey the landscape
next morning after the storm is over and the air is calm and
brilliant. There are such mornings: I saw one once, but I was at
the bottom of the valley and not high up, as at Ronco. Ronco would
take a little sun even in midwinter, but at the bottom of the
valley there is no sun for weeks and weeks together; all is in deep
shadow below, though the upper hillsides may be seen to have the
sun upon them. I walked once on a frosty winter's morning from
Airolo to Giornico, and can call to mind nothing in its way more
beautiful: everything was locked in frost--there was not a
waterwheel but was sheeted and coated with ice: the road was hard
as granite--all was quiet and seen as through a dark but incredibly
transparent medium. Near Piotta I met the whole village dragging a
large tree; there were many men and women dragging at it, but they
had to pull hard and they were silent; as I passed them I thought
what comely, well-begotten people they were. Then, looking up,
there was a sky, cloudless and of the deepest blue, against which
the snow-clad mountains stood out splendidly. No one will regret a
walk in these valleys during the depth of winter. But I should
have liked to have looked down from the sun into the sunlessness,
as the old Fate woman at Ronco can do when she sits in winter at
her window; or again, I should like to see how things would look
from this same window on a leaden morning in midwinter after snow
has fallen heavily and the sky is murky and much darker than the
earth.
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