BELLUNO. It could have reached the mountains ten years ago, but, as it was said at the time, it would have been an escape. The “ballast”, as he calls it, would follow it in the backpack and the hamster spinning in the wheel would continue to get stuck in certain mechanisms even if it had beautiful views around it and the smell of rain in the woods. Martina Smaniotto, 42, originally from San Donà di Piave, says she knows when she is telling a lie to herself. While in the rented house in Colle Santa Lucia, sitting near the already lit stove, she sips an herbal tea, the impression is that she is telling the truth when she says that “I don’t want to go back to life before, but I want to live in the mountains with there are problems, from the snow to the cold to the missing services ».
Until last year she was a project manager for a communication agency in Treviso and she dealt with digital marketing. Today she put up for sale the house in San Donà for which she is paying the mortgage, she works as a waitress at the La Murada restaurant in Rocca Pietore and has become the referent for Plastic Free Agordino.
Martina Smaniotto, 42, in the rented house in Colle Santa Lucia
Inner path
«The most beautiful journey – he says – is the one within us. I never stop amazed at myself and what I learn. We have a world inside that is sometimes scary, but it’s wonderful ». A sentence that he pronounces with the awareness of who can look back. On the way, however, the earth shook.
«The agency I worked for is doing neuro marketing studies – he says – for example, people are attached to sensors that measure their heartbeat and sweating or are made to wear helmets that monitor the frequency of certain impulses. These are systems that allow you to investigate the behavior of users struggling with the purchase of some product: what stimulates them to buy and what blocks them? These systems, which in fact bring out the unspoken, could also serve a good purpose, but ultimately I saw that they were used only for consumer purposes. You’re working for something, I told myself, which isn’t your goal. ”
In the evening she came home without the strength to do anything else, turned on the TV, switched off her brain and in the morning when she got to work she was already tired. «I was living – he underlines – to take fifteen days of summer vacation. My life had become sterile, I was humanly extinguished, desensitized ».
When, however, we go to a hundred, when the words that distinguish everyday life are “performance and perfection”, there is no room for self-analysis. “During the closure for Covid – she explains – I was forced to stay at home. I continued to work, but the pace slowed down: I painted the overhead door, I arranged the garden, I cooked. All activities that I would have done anyway because everything in my life had to be perfect, but in that moment I was able to enjoy what I was doing ».
It is in that stopping of time, which is chosen and not suffered, that questions arise. Use the third person. «Martina – he says – asked herself: but if it is not the work with its toxic mechanisms that takes my life, then what is my purpose? Martina found out that she didn’t know who she was ».
Mountain paths
The mountain is the first solution to attempt recognition. But once again, as had already happened in the past, Martina raises the doubt that it is an escape. “But I answered – he says – that this time it was a swerve to allow the hamster to reverse the direction of travel of the wheel”. So he creates an Excel sheet, divides it by regions, Veneto, Friuli Venezia-Giulia and Trentino Alto-Adige, and fills it with agritourisms, educational farms, non-intensive farms, farmers. All in the mountains.
At a certain point the number of the Milchhof Agostini farm, in Bacalin di Selva di Cadore, dials. Alberto replies that, yes, in fact he is looking for someone to help him in the barn with the cows. «He told me that if I wanted I could go up and try – says Martina – and so I did on a day in October 2020. What a thrill when at seven I entered the stable and smelled the scent of hay. That’s what I like, I told myself ». In January he takes up service, but does not last long, a month and a half.
«From the first day – he admits – I realized I was afraid of cows, but I had such a great desire that I wanted to face it, convinced that I would have overcome it. But I didn’t make it. The barn was not what they describe to you on Linea Verde and I was returning to the vicious circle where I was doing something I didn’t like just because I had decided to do it. In February I had a very strong crisis: the world I had chosen was not what I had imagined. And now?”.
But Alberto tells her of the words that Martina brings with her: «We both bet. I’m sorry you’re not staying with me, but I’m glad I gave you the chance to change your life. If you want to work, you will see that here you will find something else ».
With the help of a person, Martina focuses on herself, on the search for her path and no longer on work. «I still have to pay a mortgage and a rent here – he smiles – but I didn’t want a job that would give me too much responsibility. I’m fine in La Murada, it’s a peaceful and quiet family-run restaurant and I’m in contact with people. For the future I think I need to express my creativity for myself and for others: I would like to open something alternative in the tourist environment or to work with nature and the earth. I will find a way, maybe it won’t be linear, but I will find it ». He will look for it in the mountains, however, where – he says – “you can breathe different time and rhythm”.
«Here – he continues – fortunately there is still nature that dictates: when it snows the roads are blocked, when it is cold the“ mushroom ”is not enough to drink something outdoors in the clubs, when it gets dark you no longer work. There are different and good smells even when there is bad weather. Furthermore, when there was a fire in Canazei, I saw the whole community that gathered around the hamlet and those who lost their houses and barns. I’ve seen people cry for others. I too was sad as if I were originally from Colle. Here there is a very strong sense of community that there is not in San Donà ».
Commitment as an activist
Martina chose, almost by chance in reality, to offer a contribution to the Agordina community that welcomed her. «I have always had the habit of collecting litter from around – he explains – one day I went around the Alleghe lake and I realized how much plastic there was in the dry Cordevole bed. What to do? I had just arrived, I was alone. I sent an email to Radio Più and among the various messages I received someone suggested that I approach Plastic Free: I contacted the provincial contact person who explained to me how the Agordino had no contact person in the valley. “Do you do it? “, He asked me. I accepted and a few days ago I signed the first Agordino protocol with the Municipality of Canale d’Agordo ».
The winding roads, just like the mountain ones, go through and reach places that the highways don’t even see.
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