TRANSUMANZA
I spent part of my childhood, in the early 60s, in a district rising up at the North-West suburbs of Milan. We used to live in one of the blocks that were starting to expand quickly at that time, without a precise urban planning. This process spared just the big fields once addressed to agriculture. Here, more than once a year, shepherds passed by, for young guys that was like feast days. That’s the way I remember it. These same fields today have been eaten up by a cold big shopping centre, anonymous, similar to many others. I got back to these images when, on a cold afternoon in Winter 2005, I suddenly crossed a herd at the entrance of Milano. That’s the way I got to know Giuseppe Salvi.
It seems that every year a few shepherds move in the territory between Ticino and Adda from early October to late May. They arrive from the valleys around Bergamo and Brescia, where they spend the Summer. This moving from mountain to plain and viceversa isn’t almost anymore done by foot: most of the shepherds today carry the herd on modern camions. It’s a hard work, that of the shepherds; they don’t have any pauses, holidays, week-ends. They know the landscape better than a cartographer, they are the living memory of the territory and its changing. In Summer they go back to the “alpeggi”, oasis far from the noises and the smog of the plain. It’s just three or four quiet months during which it’s not possible to rest, anyway. Giuseppe Salvi from early Autumn to late Spring moves to the plain between the South of Milano and the North of Pavia. He normally spends the Summer around the mountains of Scalve valley instead, from “Passo Presolana” to “Passo Vivione”. Giuseppe is young, but he has been an expert shepherd for years. This job became his choice of life when, just fourteen, he decided to follow a shepherd from Melzo, in order to learn the job. I’ve been going along with him for some seasons, sharing just a little part of his 1500 kms done by foot every year. Last time I met Giuseppe was in December 2005, at the living crib in Gudo, a little town just around the city of Milano. He was there together with twenty-five sheep, one donkey and a little goat, the only actor performing his own screen. When we greeted each other he said that 2006 would have been his last year of transhumance.
