The race starts at Lake Varese before heading towards the mountains in a fantastic environment, in one of the most fascinating and selective race courses amidst nature, history and breathtaking views. Our first story tells of the legend of Lake Varese by Gianni Rodari.<\/p>\n
Every lake has its own legend: a legend that recalls its origins with fantastic precision, and is passed down from father to son until it is fixed on paper and printed, black on white, by some binder.<\/p>\n
As for our lake, this magnificent lake of ours, white on black if you see it on moonlit nights, which can be understood at a glance, it does not, as far as I know, have a legend that tells of its birth: none of the good old people found grandchildren so sleep-deprived that they had to invent, to put them to sleep, that the Angels filled an entire valley with buckets of gold, the Angels made the little island spring up, a good watchdog, and the Angels did this, they did that.<\/p>\n
What a prosastic lake, you might say.<\/p>\n
Adagio: there is compensation.<\/p>\n
Have you never seen, going down or up the so-called Sasso road, between Comerio<\/span> and Gavirate, to the right, a small church with a small porch and a mute bell tower?<\/span><\/p>\n No: you have never stopped. If you have a roaring car, you have not noticed anything: if you were Franciscan pilgrims, you have not stopped to look through a small window into the half-light of this church dedicated to the Holy Trinity.<\/p>\n Nor did you sit on the porch wall and watch the lake shudder distantly. This church has a legend.<\/p>\n It was told to me by an old woman, one of those you meet in fairy tales or in unknown corners of villages.<\/p>\n So back in the days of yore (when, who knows!) it happened to a horseman who found himself travelling through these countries in the middle of winter. The snow was so heavy that it seemed as if all the mills in the sky had spilled their flour on this flat land of Lombardy.<\/p>\n Suddenly the horseman found himself in front of an expanse of snow where not a shrub, not a stick and not an iskeletal tree, raised its arms to the sky.<\/p>\n A prairie suddenly widened, like a miracle. At the far end, a few hovels indicated the existence of a village.<\/p>\n The horseman resolutely tackles the plain: he spurs his horse, and raising whirlwinds of snow he gallops wildly. A colder air whips across his face: he would almost say icy. In little more than half an hour he has covered the entire meadow of such unusual dimensions.<\/p>\n Here he is now in front of the ruined huts in the village. He calls, passing by, for someone to answer him. He calls, he calls, and no one answers. He shakes his horse and beats on a door.<\/p>\n \u201cGood people!\u201d.<\/p>\n The little door finally opens, creaking on its hinges, and out of the black shadows emerges a teeny, tiny old lady (perhaps one of the more distant grandmothers of the one who told me the story).<\/p>\n \u201cGood morning, Knight of God!\u201d.<\/p>\n He questioned her sharply: \u201cSay: who is the owner of that meadow without trees or sticks that you see over there? I crossed it just now and I feel like buying it!\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cLord God!\u201d exclaims the old woman crooning, \u201cDid you go up there?\u201d \u201cHell, yes. What is it with you that you mark yourself on every part of your body? Do I look like a pagan?\u201d The old woman, moved, nodded in reply: \u201cMy lord, no. You are not a pagan: for otherwise the Lord would not have made you so light as to pass over the lake without the ice breaking under the horse's hooves!\u201d.<\/p>\n Now it is the turn of the knight to be astonished: for many adventures have befallen him, but never has he passed over the ice of a lake mistaking it for meadows stretched out under the sky.<\/p>\n People gather and all look at him in wonder: the Horseman of the miracle he is now for them. From the hovels the women show him to the puppets: the Horseman who passed over the lake.<\/p>\n When he finally recovered from his surprise, he took out a bag of gold and spoke to the peasants: \u201cGood landowners, hear me. I want you, in gratitude to Our Lord, One and Trine, to build a church and pray there.<\/p>\n And as they nodded, he thanked them, gave them the money and departed, never to be seen again.<\/p>\n They began to build the Church of the Holy Trinity, according to the stories. Then times changed, Gavirate became a populous and industrial town, the Church needed to be rebuilt, perhaps it is no longer as it was in those days.<\/p>\n But the lake is always the same: sometimes it freezes, sometimes it laughs.<\/p>\n It is still the lake that we love, the one that some of the elders say is a remnant of the waters of the flood, which left a country buried by the will of the Triune Lord.<\/p>\n In truth there was a country, where now the waters sway against the soft banks.<\/p>\n How was he buried and when?<\/p>\n Sit on the little wall of the church whose story I have told you: look at that stretch of lake that trembles at your gaze and perhaps you will think you can see the laughter of the boys who were buried one day, but far away, with their old wooden houses, in the waves.<\/p>\n Gianni Rodari - 21 August 1936<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" La gara parte dal lago di Varese prima di lanciarsi verso la montagna in un ambiente fantastico, in un campo di gara fra i pi\u00f9 affascinati e selettivi fra natura, storia e panorami mozzafiato. La nostra prima storia narra della leggenda del Lago di Varese di Gianni Rodari. Ogni lago ha la sua leggenda: una […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":678,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-storie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/campodeifioritrail.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/campodeifioritrail.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/campodeifioritrail.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/campodeifioritrail.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/campodeifioritrail.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/campodeifioritrail.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":952,"href":"https:\/\/campodeifioritrail.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/campodeifioritrail.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/campodeifioritrail.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/campodeifioritrail.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/campodeifioritrail.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}