#valcamonica

Passo Gavia - 2025

A Tribute to the Rock Art of Valcamonica

Life has been so much better since they showed up...

The months of the sun-season are over, and the days are getting colder. Your tribe came down from the higher peaks to seek out the caves you return to each snow. And there, you found them again - the dogs.

Your tribe's and them - you've been running on hunts more and more, as the cooler northern winds blow over the white slopes. You started cautious, many seasons past, but each seems to have learned to trust the other. Two legs and four legs, spear and fang - such hunts have proven bountiful...

But that's not what's making life better for you, is it?

The scent of cooking meat drew them to your fires, to your camps even outside of the hunts. But your offerings kept them, and now they come and go as they please. Even now, to the tribe's celebration of the sun-season's end, to the indulgence of pleasure...

And what pleasure...

Kwōn-cwēn, they're calling you now; the hound-woman. It's a quaint name, even a friendly jab. Not many in the tribe share your tastes, and those that do don't tend to eschew their fellow tribesmen as you do. But they accept you, of course - they even dedicated a part of their wall-murals to you, an appreciation of your curious nature. And curious you may be - but you wear it all with happiness, with pride.

For how can you deny what you love? Their beauty, the earnestness of their gaze. Their eager, indulgent tongues... Your spirit yearns during the flowers-season, when the dogs are away tending to their cubs. And at the site of the packs dancing across the snows as the days lengthen, your soul dances in your chest. For soon your lovers will come again.

And so, the celebration continues, the fires burning under a gaze of the sky-spirits. Under their watch, you indulge in the world they weave, and everything in it. For the others, that means each other, olive-skinned bodies rolling in the firelight. For you...

The touch of fur on skin is like no other.

Oh, what a tribe you may make one day, two legs living with four! What a pack you'll live in, eat in, and sleep in. Maybe one day, every tribesman could have the chance to share in the love of such beautiful beasts. Man's greatest friend, be it on the mountain slopes, on the sun-blanched plains...

Or in the caves, echoing with gasps and moans, as the fire burns on-

One month one photo

To be honest I’ve never seen the appeal of tattoos, nor the relative permanence thereof. I’ve given it thought off and on for most of my adult life, every single time I ultimately thought: “What happens differently if I don’t get a tattoo?” …nothing, except saving a few hundred dollars, and years of potential regret.

My advice for anyone dead-set on getting a tattoo would be to avoid the clichés. Make it one that doesn’t exist in any variation. Especially if it’s supposed to be a unique expression of what makes you you.