Indian Summer

Princess Mononoke had a giant white wolf. I've wanted one ever since.

This summer I kept returning to the Engadin, where I spent the years between thirteen and twenty.

Boarding school, teenage years. A small international world in the middle of a landscape that taught me as much as the school did.

The first thing that gets me, every time, is the smell. Arolla pine. Larch. Old wood. I walk into an old Engadin house and suddenly know exactly where I am.

Not geographically. Somewhere much further back.

At sixteen, I was made sports captain of Orania, one of our three school houses. One of the guys I loved playing football with was Brazilian. Romário, Maldini, we were magic on the field.

More than thirty years later, I found myself on the same valley floor, playing football with his fifteen-year-old son.

Ball glued to his feet, just like his father back then.

A few days earlier, I flew a kite with the daughter of one of my closest friends, on the field where we played cricket as teenagers.

I still can't quite put into words what it feels like to watch my friends' children grow up where we did.

The landscape has changed very little. The people have. I have.

Still, we recognise each other.

And some things feel exactly as I remember them.

Soon the larches will turn gold again. That short stretch of autumn when the whole valley changes colour. It might still be the most beautiful place I know.

Somehow, I finally got my white wolf.

The man in the stuva isn't real. The memories behind him are.

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