Like groups of dancers frozen in a still photograph, the twisted faggi (beech trees) repose upon a golden carpet of last autumns leaves. The rugged sentiero (footpath) mimics their contortions as it snakes its steep way up past monumental blocks, pried from the cliff faces to our left by winters icy claws and cast down into the natural anfiteatro (amphitheatre) which encloses I Lagoni. We come out of the bosco (woods) onto a flat promontorio (promontory), several hundred meters below us glistens the deep steel blue of two long slivers of water.

The frozen ‘dancers’ (beech trees)

Now we’re back in amongst the frozen dancer trees again, continuing or climb towards the mysteriously named Lago Scuro (Dark Lake). We reach a bivio (junction) and take the right hand trail. Mercifully, the climb becomes less steep until finally we reach a plateau tucked in against the almost sheer 200 meter wall of the crinale (ridge). We decide to leave that challenge for another day, and continue our way westwards, passing through a series of paludi (marshes) and across a refreshing ruscello (stream) towards Capanne di Lago Scuro. These restored huts house a laboratory which is used by the University of Parma to study the fragile wetland ecosystem of the surrounding area.

One of the ‘monumental blocks’. This one seemed to have a huge door which has been left slightly accostata (ajar), perhaps an entrance to the underworld?

We find a rocky knoll overlooking the capanne (huts), and hungrily break out our pranzo al sacco: panini con ricotta al forno e pomodoro, acqua fresca, e per dolce, una mela ciascuno (packed lunch: sandwiches with oven baked ricotta and tomato, fresh water, and for desert, an apple each). We’d expected to have found Lago Scuro by now, and were seriously beginning to doubt its existence, especially when I asked a couple of walkers who appeared from the opposite direction: “scusate, ma di là c’è il Lago Scuro?” (“excuse me, but is Lago Scuro in that direction?”), and they replied “non abbiamo visto nessun lago!” (“We haven’t seen any lakes!”). Perhaps, I suggested to Serena, it’s just a name given to the marshy area that we passed through, or perhaps it only exists in the rainy season?

Refreshed by our pranzo, and with considerably lighter zaini (rucksacks), we begin the trek back down to where we’ve left the car, and to our surprise, after only a couple of hundred meters, … another bivio with a sign pointing off to the left indicating ‘Lago Scuro’. Another one hundred and fifty meters and we find ourselves besides a specchio d’acqua (mirror of water) cupped in a small bowl beneath imposing cliffs and peaks. Every few second, the almost total stillness is broken by the ‘plop’ of a fish rising rapidly to the surface to gulp down some unsuspecting insect.

We sit for a few moments beside the shore, and I feel an overwhelming desire to find a large flat surface on which to stretch myself out and close my eyes. As there are no such convenient surfaces in sight I content myself with sitting on a small rock and contemplating the ripples left on the surface by the hungry fish. It’s only as we’re getting up to leave that I notice a curious slab of stone to my right which seems to have some letter like incisions on its surface. Together, Serena and I study the ancient looking graffiti until we begin to make out fragments of words. We run our fingers over the lichen encrusted surface to try and trace the form of the less defined letters. Finally Serena, who loves puzzles (and was trained as an Egyptologist) has the solution!

QUI APPARVE LA DAMA DEL LAGO HERE APPEARED THE LADY OF THE LAKE

 This little accidental discovery seems to confirm the almost mystical sense of being in ‘another world’ which one experiences up here at 1,500 meters in the Appennino Tosco Emiliano, a place far from the harsh realities, superficialities, and unnecessary ugliness’s of so called 21st century ‘civilization’ …. Here there be Dragons!

Click on the photo for a map of the area.