We left Milan behind.

The traffic at the end of the day, when everyone spills out of the offices, fleeing deadlines, rushing home. Immersed in the endless rhythm of a city that never stops.

On the highway, the flow continued. Fast, congested, anonymous. I think that highways are non-places: they extend the city outward, carrying its noise further, but never truly upward. They don’t lead to silence.

The change began with the hairpin bends. Curves carved into the mountain forced us to slow down, to follow the rhythm of stone` and slope. Each turn was a new beginning, each ascent a reminder that altitude has its own pace. From the linear to the sinuous, from the predictable to the unexpected. Only there did the journey truly begin. 

Stillness. Thin air. A horizon wide enough to hold breath. At 2,400 meters, the refuge stood at the edge of stone and sky. Not simply a destination, but a threshold. Once built for survival, these places now hold something else: a pause, a different rhythm, distance from everything left below. A roof against the weather, but also a shelter for time itself.

At night the contrast revealed itself most clearly. In Milan, the sky is erased by neon and headlights. Here, darkness becomes a gift. The absence of light reveals another kind of illumination: constellations unfolding endlessly above us. 

Protection, not emptiness. 

Dawn fractured the silence, unveiling nature in a different way, carried lightly by the thin air. Time itself dissolved, measured differently here. 

And yet, in this distance, we did not become different. We didn’t leave ourselves behind with the city. What we wear every day, our habits, our essence, our second skin, follows us here. The same jackets that cut through urban nights warm us in the mountain air. The same silhouettes that move through crowded streets belong just as naturally among stone and silence. Continuity is what makes refuge possible: we are not strangers here, but ourselves, simply at rest. 

What we found was more than shelter. It was a reminder that safety is not only protection from the elements, but the creation of space to breathe. A pause from velocity, from expectation, from the constant elsewhere. 

This season tells us something simple: we can face the return to frenetic days only if we know there is a place, a moment, where we can stop. Not to escape, but to gather strength. Not to run away, but to begin again. 

That’s where we went to stay in peace.