Desmalgada*
The festival began at the end of summer. Each herd grazes and still enjoys the evenings that are a bit shorter and already a bit cooler.
Dogs, shepherds, and cowherds calmly contemplate the end of a long season wichh started around Easter. A little after or a little before, depending on the year.
Then, a few late-born lambs were taken care of by the guardians of the mountain pastures.
And the transhumance began. It was necessary to gather, count and recount, tend to the wounds, comfort the stray sheep, and congratulate the shepherd dogs for the whole past season. Among friends. Among family.
Everyone will go down to the valley. To reunite with their wives and children for some, to fresh straw and comfortable stables for others.
A few nights are still sometimes spent under the stars because the journey can be long.
While the sheep and goats frolic on the hillsides where the grass is fresh, the cows, heavier, guided by their own bells, stop at a mountain hut. Here, the cowherds and farmers will rub, wash, and pamper each one before decorating them with the prettiest flowers and the most beautiful bouquets. Nothing is too beautiful. Time stands still. The only thing that matters is the beauty of the herd and the welcome it will receive as it passes through the first villages.
The festival will last all Saturday, all night, and all Sunday.
Then will come the first cold spells, the first snowflakes, the winter blanket, and in a few months, more discreetly, everyone will take the path back to these wild spaces that the mountain pastures still are.
Jean-Claude Raskin
• * Desmalgada: A term in the Trentino dialect that describes the return of the herds in autumn, an event that is celebrated with great festivities.
