TREKKING ACROSS A DISTINCTION

OCTOBER 16, 2014

From a trek I did in Europe. A slow journey across a single distinction.

An aerial view of the European Alps...a geological boundary.

The geopolitical border of Italy is distinct...

There is Italy and Not Italy.

Yet the boundaries are fuzzy when you zoom in...

On the ground, the boundaries are less obvious...

And there are many more distinctions related to and within this one...

Each one of those has a boundary, too. (i.e., is and is not).

Einstein’s thought experiment that led him to relativity involved two men on a train...his insight about time and space was one of perspective.

We can experience Einstein’s gandenken experiment when we take the train from Venice to the little town of Belluno, the start of our journey in Northern Italy at the foot of the great Dolomites...

At the beginning of our trek, we find Italians... not surprisingly they run Italian huts (refugios) and hotels, speak Italian, serve Italian food and fly the Italian flag(s)...

And have interesting clocks that challenge our views about what constitutes a clock...

Our journey will take us from hut to hut...or rather from refugio to refugio-hütte to hütte...

As we trek northward, toward the border with Austria, things are changing...the people, food and culture are different...

They are Italian, because they live in Italy, but they do not act entirely Italian...they serve pasta and strudel, speak Italian and German-Austrian, fly different flags, have different architecture, history, and customs...

It turns out they are different...they are the Ladin which is itself a complex system of distinctions within distinctions...

Ladino in Italian, Ladin in Ladin, Ladinisch in German

The Ladin are not homogenous (although there are Ladin and not- Ladin), but within this distinction there are different dialects of Ladin, different regions and customs and foods and history...

We approach a historical boundary--one that is now inside of Italy but was once the land of Austria and before that, Tyrol...the border has moved many times. We see the remnants of Austrian encampments where Austrian mountain troops fought Italians on what is now Italy...I wonder who the Ladin fought for...

The mountain geology doesn’t change in parallel yet there are many changes and distinctions of a different kind...

Are the flowers, the land, the animals different as we go? Do those systems adhere to the Italian, Ladin, Austrian boundaries? If the Ladin are genetically different and they have lived with their domesticate d livestock for hundreds of years, the livestock may be distinctly different, too.

Are all of the customs and culture different between Italian, Ladin and Austrian communities? God and Mountain Climbing is like death and taxes...

Our Trek Across a Distinction points out how much more complex and colorful are our borders, boundaries and distinctions...this was just one...there are many more...

Does every distinction have the potential to be as complex and colorful as the one between Italy and not Italy?