Gessica and Andrea, her parents, have chosen to live here: we are fine in this peace. Before Megan, the last child was born in 1968. After World War II, the village of Arta Terme had about fifty people
ARTA TERME. In the small village, at the foot of Mount Sernio, the wind cradles the pink flags and that movement continues to announce the birth of Megan. The happy-eyed girl came into the world last June 14, at the Tolmezzo hospital, and does not yet know that she is a protagonist of Rinch’s story. It was she who broke the long chain of missed births that had lasted for 53 years.
In the ancient village of Arta Terme, located in a natural basin at 850 meters above sea level, the last born was Angela Tolazzi, Megan’s great aunt, registered in the registry office in 1968. Since then the Carnic mountain village has undertaken a slow and inexorable depopulation interrupted now by Megan’s tears.
Today in Rinch live Gessica Della Schiava and Andrea Bertuzzi, Megan’s parents, both thirty-two, and an irreducible person who has become passionate about these places. Four years ago, Gessica and Andrea chose to continue their life together here. They are not two mountain pioneers, they know these lands well.
They consciously decided to return to the place where Gessica’s grandmother lived because – they explain – “we love nature, silence and we feel good in this peace”.
The couple renovated the house, safeguarding the architectural typology, and equipped themselves to clear the snow from the stretch of country road that continues from Plan di Coces, the other village a few kilometers from Rinch, where once there was also the elementary school.
A detail this confirms the vitality that animated these mountains. Andrea works with a forest company, Gessica is an employee of the Automotive and every day, at all hours, she goes down to Tolmezzo. «It’s not a problem» assure Gessica and Andrea sitting in their kitchen where the sun illuminates the beams of the attic making the color of the wood warmer.
This story well planted in the past points the way towards the possible recovery of the high lands. “It was not an easy choice – acknowledges the couple -, but faced with the possibility of building a house in such a beautiful place, we had no doubts”. Gessica and Andrea share the philosophy of the mountaineer made of sacrifice, know-how and the art of getting by. This spirit spurred them to readjust spaces to their needs, to think that nothing is irreplaceable: “If you lack something, do it with what you have, the important thing is not to do it unwillingly”. The isolation does not scare them, “we are not out of this world – they say – by car in twenty minutes we arrive in Tolmezzo”.
They are not even afraid of the looming mountains which, not only on autumn days, can make their stay suffocating. «To live here you must have an inner strength» acknowledges Gessica letting her gaze go where the clouds run, creating unforgettable profiles. In this time and place Gessica and Andrea cultivate the vegetable garden, sow potatoes and harvest beans.
They do not need to chase away melancholy because melancholy does not find space in their experience. Gessica remembers the time she spent here as a child with her grandmother, when attachment to home and livestock was a value.
In Rinch, favored by its geographical position, the inhabitants felt safe even during the Cossack occupation. Today, tourists pass through this natural cradle: “After Covid, many arrive,” Andrea points out, hoping that sustainable tourism will prevail. The Cai volunteers have reopened the path that climbs from Cadunea to Rinch, crossing the Derchia stream several times.
The route unknown before the pandemic is now also used by trekking lovers. “We are not alone” repeat Gessica and Andrea knowing that the mountain lives again with the sedentary, with those who know how to read the messages that nature launches. Their attempt is to revive Rinch, the village inhabited after World War II by about fifty people who, as Igino Dorissa writes in “The Forgotten Valley”, over the centuries had received the lands from the Camucio counts, the same ones who in 1647 had acquired by the Venetian Republic, with the Manin, Pianese and Antonini, for 40 thousand ducats, the noble title to govern the County of Carnia.