Alone at Sunset | Touring

30 December 2024 Redazione Experience, Lifestyle, News

Words Andrea Albertazzi / Photo Bruno Serra

Our job is pretty special. Some days I almost hate it, but most of the time I’m madly in love with it. Then there are those days out of the office, the ones I prefer and can’t do without. These are the moments when everything takes on a unique flavor and I find myself questioning, searching in the silence of a late afternoon what could be better than being in this place. Some call it planets alignment, but without bringing astrology into the brawl I believe that it is more simply a moment in which certain things happen and between games of light and noise those so-called emotions are created, the same ones that bring you a different awareness than before.

During my years spent at the desk of Auto Class Magazine I have been lucky – or rather, honored – to drive extraordinary cars. I have done it in the only way I consider suitable for these objects, that is, on exciting roads capable of raising the driving factor in a way that would not be possible in the city, much less on a crowded racetrack. Here, where the air becomes thin and the beauty of the metallic lines of a sports car is affected by the majesty of the mountains, you are literally kidnapped by a vortex of sensations that drags you until the last lights of the day. And in autumn, with the most spectacular color palette of the year, the hours of light are fewer so this means that you realize the passing of the hours, with the shadows that lengthen and the daylight that transforms into a golden aura that covers the highest peaks and that in the space of a few minutes vanishes into an orange pandemonium.

At sunset everything becomes quieter, with the mountain pass now abandoned by those few tourists who have kept it alive during the day. The car stops in rigorous contemplation and you are forced to cover up because the temperatures are severely close to zero. The sun is a glow in the distance, a ball that is extinguishing the life of an incredible day, ready to hide behind the highest mountains. Soon it will be completely dark and you will struggle to even distinguish the edges of the narrow road that descends the Italian side of the Colle della Lombarda.

It is a moment that lasts very little and that you would like to prolong as much as possible. A fraction that crystallizes in the soul and that muffles every noise, with an amplified echo in the total void of a mountain that you feel as something of yours, in a way that has never been so strong. Here, it is not one of those moments in which you blurt out “That’s why it’s worth it”, because deep down in your heart you are aware that it is a moment so intimate and personal that you would almost like to keep it for yourself. Reality is that there is no way to explain. That particular light, that absence of everything else except the boundless love for this wild nature, yet so rich in emotion.

I have reached the peaks in the middle of the night and it has never been on par with all this. The long-sought answer probably lies in the fact that all of this is something that happens. It should not be made to happen, it just happens. And so, when your heart explodes in front of this magnificent reality capable of making your legs tremble, all you have to do is stop, turn off the engine and admire the greatest satisfaction that this blink of an eye is capable of offering: the unconditional love for a moment that will last forever.