Hello dear Steemians and fellow travellers!

For years I have been looking for a place where I belong. I have lived in big cities for all my life, looking for opportunities. I was sure that opportunities come from there. The city is where you meet interesting people, where you make a career, and where the latest cultural and artistic trends are happening. It's the future.

I am genuinely inclined to embrace the future, no matters what it brings, otherwise I would not be here on Steemit.

I want to look ahead of me, open arms, but I would not cue at the Apple store for the next I-phone to be launched, ready to catch it on the fly.

I want to see the London premiere of Oscar winning films in a I-Max cinema, with a Dolby Atmos sound system, but only when I get a free ticket. It happened only once.

I am not an old-fogey, conservative prick who bluntly opposes abortion and in vitro fertilisation, but I do oppose the free market ruling over our lives and to humans being reduced to exchangeable commodities.

I occasionally shop in vintage second-hand stores, but that is totally in line with the current fashion trend.

Ok, I love seasoned cheeses and aged red wine, and I think I am able to clumsily translate Ancient Greek and Latin, but I have not tried since high school.

I would not work happily in a library archive or on some archeological site and I don't particularly enjoy black and white movies. Though I do get the thrill of new discoveries like the Homo naledi and I did not fall asleep watching Battleship Potemkin.

What I am questioning here is: are you sure the future comes from the big cities?

I brought my drone to La Grignetta, 2,177 meters. La Grignetta is internationally famous, as it attracts in every season many climbers from all over the world. They come here for the countless towers, monoliths, spiers and pinnacles of which it is composed. It became over the years the favorite climbing gym of great names of mountaineering world as Emilio Comici, Riccardo Cassin, Walter Bonatti, who traced rock routes considered today "classic".

These is an image that my Mavic Pro brought back to me. You can see the massive Monte Rosa on the left-hand side, and spectacular spike of Monte Cervino. The forked shape of Como Lake underneath.

I tried to fly it 500 meters higher, until I noticed that two gliders were twirling over my head, so I immediately gave priority and called the Mavic home.

As I climbed higher, the snow begun to get frosty. In this season, the whole mountain is in dubt between winter and spring, and it felt like climbing the seasons backwards, from the already sultry air of the city of Milan, to the sheer spring-like exuberance of the wood, to the frozen summit.

The sign is barely visible, under 2 meters of snow. It's time to put the crampons on and attack the last steepest side of the mountain.

Now, time for my wisdom to be shared. Savour it slowly.

If you look at a river where would you say is the past and the future?

Have you ever observed the trouts swimming countercurrent in a mountain torrent and moving their tail just enough to stay still and face upwards? They are waiting for everything the water can carry, mouldy branches, a Coca-Cola can, or warms, or flies. Is the future in the direction to where the water is streaming? Wrong. It comes from higher.

For centuries, people have escaped power structures, political conventions, good manners and state control to seek a shelter in the mountains, where taxes cannot reach and politicians promises don't matter.

With the current financial crisis, and technological unemployment, more opportunities can come from the mountains, rather then the cities. Think about it. Have a walk and think about it.

The future comes from the mountain, not from the city.

I am still in search of my landscape. I always want to find the one that matches with my mood, and my state of mind. Is it at 1500 meters high? Firs and larches, whose shadow grows the blueberry, the juniper, and the rhododendron, and roe deers hide. Or is it at 2000 meters? Alpine meadow, streams, peat bogs, high altitude grasses, grazing cattles.

Even higher, the vegetation disappears, the snow covers everything until the beginning of the summer and the prevailing color is the gray of the rock, veined by the quartz and inlaid by the yellow of the lichens. Up there, among the gullies of avalanches, taking those last steps on the ridge, trying not to look down, concentrated to tread the footprints left before me, I felt happy.

Thanks for reading, I hope that you find your landscape, and that you stream against the current, please upvote if you read it and if you like it!
@appics - we are looking forward to share these pictures with you!

Ale+Elli