I don’t remember the first moment I saw a picture of the Italian Dolomites, but I do recall being instantly enamored and drawn to them, tucking a visit to the range away amongst the tippy-top of my bucket list items.

I didn’t plan to travel to Italy when I originally brainstormed this trip. I actually didn’t plan to end up in most of the countries I’ve been visiting when I originally set these dates aside; but when the initial plan first began to unravel, I decided perhaps my backup plan should include utilizing my Ikon Pass at as many of the European resorts as I possibly could. It just so happened Dolmiti Superski was one of those resorts.

I opted to fly in and out of Zurich, Switzerland for my trip, due to its central location to everywhere I hoped to go and the surprisingly and comparably reasonable plane tickets prices. From there, I began an overwhelming amount of lodging, train schedule and rental car research. I’d never rented a car in a foreign country before and my experience navigating train stations, especially ones of the grandeur found in Europe, was limited.

I still don’t know if it was wise to book every single train (nine of them, plus two long distance buses) in advance without fully comprehending where I would be or where I was going, but the internet suggested purchasing ahead could be significantly cheaper and having all of the tickets in hand ahead of time helped me conceptualize if and how my combination of snowboard ambitions and my desire to visit friends and family would fit together.

I had a six hour layover at the Chicago O’Hare airport on my way to Zurich, during which I found myself in a United Lounge staring at my eleven public transport ride, five country, four friend, fifteen night with eight different lodging arrangement (nine if you count a red-eye flight as a lodging arrangement), one rental car itinerary.

In the weeks leading up to my trip, I became preemptively grateful for the fact that my trip would start solo but end with familiar faces. The initial layout for this trip was actually to do the opposite — to start by visiting friends and family and then to end by bopping around ski towns — but the need to push my entire trip back a week due to a work training threw a wrench in that outline: not only would Dolmiti Superski be closed for the season by the time I arrived, my friend in Belgium wouldn’t be able to host me if my trip structure stayed entirely the same.

When I went to Portugal for the Portuguese Camino de Santiago in 2019, I had an emotionally difficult time ending a social international trip in relative isolation. I’m really glad I accidentally didn’t set myself up for the same on this trip.

But still, there I was, in Chicago, unable to shake the knowledge that despite the promise of social reprieve at the end of my trip, I didn’t have any in-advance-connections for the first nine days of my trip. Did I believe I would meet people along the way as I always do? Yes. Did I feel that would be sufficient? I wasn’t sure.

In a moment of panic I pulled up the dating app Hinge on my phone. I changed my dating goals to indicate that I was solely looking for adventure friends as I traveled and I changed my location to Chamonix, France — I was ending my snowboard travels in Chamonix and in the moment I figured that would give me enough time to preemptively chat with, and screen, a few friend-contenders in the area. It wasn’t long before matches started trickling in — a guy name Tim asked me about my dog, Arlo, and someone else asked me why I didn’t like mangos (my most controversial opinion on my generally inactive dating profile). I googled the population of Chamonix and panicked again, I didn’t want to give a town with a population of <10k access to my dating profile and the knowledge of my impending presence in their town.

I quickly changed my location to Milan, fully aware of the fact that Milan was giant and my only plans there were to retrieve and return a rental car for my nearly four hour drive east, but then a mozzarella maker with a water buffalo farm reached out, informed me that he had visited Colorado for the first time exactly one year prior to my first day in Italy, and after exchanging a message or two offered to take me out for pizza before I left Milan.

I previously had no intention of seeing any of Milan. I don’t generally consider myself a city-tourist and I truly thought the Dolomites were the only reason I needed to go to Italy. Additionally, I was overwhelmed enough by the notion of renting and driving a car in a foreign country, but I did agree to eat a piece of pizza with him — perhaps it would be good to talk through the three possible routes I could take to the Dolomites and pick his brain about what they might be like in the springtime while I was at it. I told him to let me know where I should meet him, that I would head his way as soon as I secured my rental car. “Are you confident with Milan parking spots?” he responded.

I can’t explain why in my gut I felt it would be safer to get in the car with a man in a foreign country who had been to the Great Sanddunes National Park and Red Rocks Amphitheater than it did to be my own chauffeur in the second largest city in Italy for any longer than I absolutely needed to be — and I still told Melanie about my plans and threw my inReach tracking on for her to follow (you’re welcome, Dad?) — but I’m really glad I trusted my gut.

After landing in Zurich and walking around for a few hours, I boarded my train to Milan. Alessandro promptly picked me up out front of the Central Station and as we drove off towards our late-lunch I was immediately grateful to not be the one driving, or parking. In the short time we spent together, he navigated us to the-best-pizza-open-at-3pm-in-Milan (apparently that’s a rare time for a restaurant to be open) with commendable finesse, took me out for espresso and taught me how to drink it properly — “How many sips do you normally drink this in?” I asked as I awkwardly held up the shot-glass sized mug between my thumb and pointer finger. “One or two,” he said, “for you maybe two or three.” — and drove me to see the Duomo, the Galleria and the fancy Milan Starbucks.

“You’re funny,” he said as I took yet another photo of the historic structures I wouldn’t have otherwise seen, “like a little kid on Christmas.” I told him he should see me in the mountains. I didn’t tell him that the analogy was somewhat inapplicable to me — that I had spent the previous Christmas morning alone sobbing myself to sleep at 10am; nor did I choose to allude to how out of whack life felt both prior to and since the holidays, or how necessary this trip felt for my mental health. It didn’t feel like I needed to, because in those very moments I felt like I was actively regaining traction, making forward progress and finding solace in the midst of my favorite thing: seeing something new with someone who chose to venture beside me.

We power walked back to his strategically parked car and from there he impressively executed the drive to Thrifty, where I picked up my rental car with exactly thirteen minutes to spare.

“Call me if you need help translating or have any trouble,” he said as I ran down the one-way street he dropped me off on in an effort to shave off another five minutes, “I know how Italians can be.” In the barely two hours we spent together, Alessandro taught me how to figure out the toll-roads on my impending road trip — use the blue lanes — and he felt like a fast friend as we bonded over the John Mayer songs that hit hardest and sneak-peaks at life-stories. In the days following he checked in often. I sent pictures of the mountains and confessed my probable speeding-camera ticket and the associated anxiety I had about both that and the strange sound my rental car had been making (I ended up taking it into the shop, where they removed the front right tire, unwedged a considerable sized pebble and charged me nothing).

Though I wasn’t necessarily close to Milan during the majority of my time in Italy, it was really, really nice to feel like I had the support of a friend near-ish-by — not to mention one who understood the culture and area I had recklessly dove (and drove, lol) into.

My time in the Dolomites themselves was filled with sleeping, non-stop mountain pursuits and then repeating. I slept until 11am my first morning there, blaming jet lag and my whirlwind travels for robbing me of five hours of daylight in the place I most anticipated visiting. It ended up working out fine, because I was allowed to pick up my snowboard rental for the following day noon. As the helpful man at the rental shop adjusted the bindings on my Burton board, with a picture of a giant grizzly bear on the bottom, I asked where he recommended going. I didn’t fully comprehend the layout or method to the map-chaos that was Dolmiti Superski; to be honest, I still don’t.

He gave me a few “local” recommendations and I proceeded to ask him if the parking was expensive. He looked up from the binding-adjustment, “not compared to Colorado,” he laughed, taking me by surprise. “This is the biggest ski area in Italy and lift tickets in Colorado are almost double the price,” he continued, “I can’t even imagine what the parking cost is there.” I thanked him for his help, kindness and advice and thought about how sad it was that, to him, this was the (reasonable) reputation of my home.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening moseying to my ultimate destination — Tre Cime di Lavaredo — by way of two different Dolmiti Superski stops. I first stoped at Alta Badia, a lift accessed directly from a roughly ten-car dirt parking lot at the top of a stunning pass. I could’ve stayed longer (a theme of my trip), but I left in pursuit of squeezing in a few runs at Cortina D’Ampezzo before pressing onward to Tre Cime, where I intended to hike four miles up a closed road before daylight was lost.

I spent the whole hike down grateful for the day and the beauty I witnessed and the people who had already helped point me in the right direction along my way. I also spent the hike down grateful for the knowledge that, per a quick google search, there was a restaurant in the town I was staying in that stayed open until midnight. It was 8pm and I was still fairly jet lagged without an appetite for dinner, but I figured I’d arrive around 10:30pm just in time to be hungry and not cut it close to the kitchen closing.

Two and a half hours later, I walked up to the door famished and made eye contact with the bar-tender through the glass door, which didn’t open. I immediately began walking away in defeat, humbly aware of the RX bar and turkey stick I would be eating for dinner as the bartender chased me down the street — the place wasn’t closed, I had attempted to pull a push door. “Menu?” I asked as he returned to the back of the bar. “No food,” he responded.

I sat at the bar drinking my beer, sneaking nibbles of my RX bar and texting Melanie. “I felt like I had to stay after he chased me down the street,” I explained. “You better be writing about that in your journal,” she responded. “I feel like you are my journal most of the time,” I told her.

I slept until 11am the next morning, again, before embarking up a gondola that took me to the inter-connected valley of the Dolmiti Superski network. As previously mentioned, I still don’t really understand how it all connects, nor did I get the full opportunity to due to the extreme lack of snow. I didn’t mind, though. I knew my travels were taking place during the end of a season with notoriously poor snow, but I was there for the views and I was thankful for the easy-access and variety of views the chair-lifts provided; especially the view from Seceda — that jagged pile of rocks was another sight on the top of my list. I walked through the mud in my snowboard boots to get a closer view and then snowboarded down the patchy route to a small restaurant where I ate a plate of spaghetti and drank an espresso in two sips.

I left shortly afterwards to make sure I had time to take my rental car to a local mechanic. I had initially planned to spend the evening at a place the man who helped me rent my snowboard recommended for après, wary of putting unnecessary miles on my screeching fancy car, but after my rental car engine failure turned out to be an easily removed piece of gravel, I took off for one last sunset.

Val de Funes did not disappoint. It was the most majestic way I could think of to wrap up my final hours of daylight in the Dolomites. I proceeded to drink local wine and eat most of an entire pizza at a nearby place that had an actual kitchen.

In the midst of staying in touch with Alessandro and consulting with him about all things Italy (mostly about all things driving in Italy as aforementioned, because it turns out I’m fairly fluent in mountains), he asked if I’d like to get coffee in Milan before I returned my car and boarded a train back to Switzerland. I countered with an unsubtle reminder that I’d never met a water buffalo, more or less inviting myself to detour past his farm on the way to Milan.

I left at 5am in my effort to show up at the water buffalo farm just after 8am (of note, Ruston Kelly’s new album dropped at 6am Milan time making the hours that this drive spanned some of the most highly anticipated of my entire year). Alessandro greeted me and gave a quick tour of the place. He snapped a picture of me cuddling a baby water buffalo and then we drank coffee and ate fruit with yogurt made from water buffalo milk at his kitchen table.

As we sat there, I filled him in on even more details of my Italian driving escapades, including the tale of my confusion surrounding how to correctly make a left turn as I left Milan a few days prior. “You drove in the bus lane?” he asked me, dismayed. “There are cameras in those lanes as well, you’ll probably get a ticket for that, too.”

I’ve been doing some research since and it sounds like it’s fairly likely I’ll get tracked down for some, or all, my infractions. It also sounds probable that the rental car company will charge me extra money for helping track me down. Until then, I’ll be living in suspense and anticipation as to how much my post-Italy bill is going to be, when it will show up and how I’ll go about paying for it .. but I’ll mostly be spending that time grateful for the stories and the pebbles and the mending that took place along the way.

“.. & I want to live like I’m only made of air, and I will forgive what I’ve done out of despair. I’m trying to find the happiness and healing in the things that still need some repair. || I wish you only happiness and healing and I hope that you’re finding it out there.” — Ruston Kelly (Mending Song)