The Weight She Carried: A Chronicle of the Mountain Markets

 Looking for the Slow Life, trying to escape the hectic pace of our lives, is the dream of having a peaceful life like our ancestors. I'll tell you today what their life was really like. 

Your phone has buzzed seventeen times since you started reading this. Mine too. We live in an age where everything arrives instantly, yet nothing feels like it truly lands.

But let me take you somewhere else. To a woman I never met, walking a path I’ll never walk.

Three Days Up, Three Days Down

A friend told me about his grandmother. Every month, she would fill a wooden chest with whatever her hands had made—preserves, woven goods, vegetables from the terraced garden clinging to the mountainside. Then she would lift that chest onto her head and begin to walk.

Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/the-weight-she-carried-a-chronicle

Everyone Hates Cyclists (Except When They Don't)

The complex relationship Italians (and others) have with cycling blends the charm of the race tradition with the tensions it creates.

The roads through Valdengo wind toward the sanctuary of Oropa like ribbons thrown carelessly across the Piedmont hills. Last Sunday, they belonged entirely to the cyclists — or more precisely, to the grand theater of Italian professional cycling, as the first edition of the TROFEO TESSILE e MODA VALDENGO — OROPA carved its way through these ancient textile valleys.

By mid-morning, the procession had already begun. First came the motorcycle outriders, their engines growling importantly. Then the police, lights flashing their blue authority across shuttered shops and closed intersections.

Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/everyone-hates-cyclists-except-when

The Garden That Teaches Us to Wait

This Sunday, I'll stand in a garden that took 140 years to become what it is. Not because anyone was slow. Because that's how long it takes to grow a masterpiece. 

Have you ever seen doorbells like this? Lovely!

I’m volunteering with FAI—Italy’s National Trust—at Villa Silvio Mosca in Biella, a place most tourists will never see.

It sits in the shadow of the Alps, in a town known for wool mills and rain. The kind of place many of us skip on our way to more photogenic destinations. But here’s what they’re missing: a lesson our accelerated world desperately needs.

In 1889, Silvio Mosca—an engineer who’d made his fortune in textiles—stood on a bare plot of land. He could have hired an architect. Instead, he drew the plans himself. For two years, he personally oversaw every stone, every tree placement, every sightline. He planted a cork oak, exotic and improbable in Piedmont’s climate. He positioned cedars where they’d frame the mountains just so. He created artificial hills to make a small garden feel infinite.

Then came the waiting. 

Continue reading: https://exegi.substack.com/p/the-garden-that-teaches-us-to-wait

Tagliere — The Mountains' Shared Board

 In Italy, time isn't chased—it's shared. The tagliere, a rustic wooden board laden with simple abundance, invites you to slow down, one bite at a time. 

A Weekend in Acqui Terme: Time Slows Where Warm Waters Flow

In the Piedmont hills, where Romans once soaked their weary bones, a small town keeps ancient secrets bubbling just beneath the surface.

The Station That Time Forgot