If you think about it, up to 90% of the natural world is made up of annoying, not to mention downright dangerous, things, like insects, snakes, humidity, dung and brambles.

And it is precisely for this reason that over the years we have invented asphalt, concrete, splendid glass buildings, so that we can defend ourselves from this world harmful to human proliferation.

It is from the industrial revolution that our species has received an exceptional driving force that has projected us into an incredible world of technology and innovation. Which is what allows us to interact at this moment.

No more sweat, no more effort, our cities, thanks to concrete, are now clean and healthy, far from pests which can only come from a dangerous place like a forest. I don’t know if you know the films about Christopher Columbus, at a certain point, invariably someone is bitten by a snake and dies. Snake that is part of one of the above categories.

Perhaps…

Obviously none of you know me, and some would say that’s a good thing, but since you’re here now, I might as well tell you a few things.

I am a designer, I have spent the last 12 years designing houses and sometimes boats. Solid, safe things that keep humans alive, as if I were some sort of Mother Teresa of construction.

But there has always been a little voice inside me, which kept whispering to me that something was out of place. And this voice kept increasing and increasing until… Covid hit us. Like walking face first into a wall.

I’ll spare you the sentimental rant about how hard it was, etc. etc., all of you have experienced it and know how it was and how it still is. The forced inactivity has inevitably led us to have more time to think (apart from those over there anyway), and the disturbing voice has made itself heard more and more.

And that’s where I started thinking about Hunum. For those wondering what Hunum means, it is the portmanteau of the Latin words Humanus, humus and Unicum. Human, earthly and unique. There will be time later for inspired discourse on the meaning of the three words, but for now let’s move on.

I therefore decided impulsively to take on the role of modern Umberto Nobile, and begin an exploration of these disturbing and highly dangerous places, in the world of nature and agriculture, sacrificing myself for the love of science, to see if it is actually possible. for humans to survive in nature.

In 2020 I started looking for some land to buy, I tried first in Puglia, but I had some difficulties, probably the fact of living 1000 km away didn’t help. Then I began to become interested in that inscrutable activity that is mountain agriculture. I was immediately fascinated by how farmers in the Alps, for centuries, have obtained their food from rocks. Which is what mountains are made of.

At the beginning of 2021 I finally found the right place, and clearly all the problems it brought with it. But that too is material for another episode.

Hunum is located on a plot of approximately three hectares in the heart of the central Alps, nestled between Lake Como, St. Moritz and the Engadine, and the famous, and much appreciated by me, Valtellina wine district.

On the property there are 7 huts divided into 3 groups, which will gradually be transformed into an accommodation facility.

As you can imagine, this place is extremely chaotic, wild and dangerous right now. But in the next few months, thanks to my complete lack of experience in the agricultural sector, it will become completely productive land, where at a certain point splendid chestnuts will appear on the ground, completely autonomously, I will be able to collect blueberries which will appear in their natural form, in their plastic trays hanging from shrubs, and the bees will bottle their nectar inside their typical organic glass jars.

Jokes aside, up here the land is virgin, the air is clean and the water is pure. I can’t wait to see what nature will be able to do, despite my presence.

At a certain point the huts will be gradually transformed into an accommodation facility in the form of a widespread agritourism, where very courageous people will be able to face the challenge of disconnecting from the moving world, and tasting a sip of uncontaminated nature.

But what drives a 37-year-old man, well integrated into society, used to traveling and always being on the crest of a wave, to retire to an abandoned mountain pasture?

I actually don’t have a definitive answer yet. And I hope to find it, in time, together with you. But I know what was wrong with my previous life.

As I said before, in the last two years we have all somehow found ourselves taking stock of what we have done to date. We are all used to living in an uninterrupted flow of events, at such a fast pace that it is difficult to truly realize where we are heading. We all proceed with our heads down, jumping from one task to another, from one occasion to another, following a sort of collective direction, without truly expressing our own will.

Or at least that’s the impression I got when this flow suddenly stopped. An unnatural stop, like one of those slaps you get as a child, which changes your prospects for future life! (Let’s remember that sometimes a slap is a gesture of love).

But who are they? Or rather who was I? What were my inclinations, my dreams when I was a child or teenager? What were the things that made me feel good? Are those the things I have tried to cultivate in my life?

I actually didn’t like the answer to these questions very much. To set the record straight, I am not a person who believes in regrets. All lives deserve to be lived, and every experience contributes to making us who we are, for better or for worse, but without experiences we would be nothing. The void. Like those, in short.

However, I realized that I had made choices more in accordance with the image of what I should have been (or would have liked to be) than with what I actually was. It’s as if in the space of a few years I had closed a significant part of myself in a drawer, to allow the minority and weak part to take over. And I am convinced that many of you will find yourself in this.

A trip to Puglia, in the first year of the pandemic, opened my eyes. It reminded me of the curious and enthusiastic child I was. Visiting the places where I spent the most beautiful moments of my childhood, with my head disconnected from the flow we were talking about before, made me relive sensations that I had, in fact, locked in a drawer.

But who had time to smell the air and smell the earth and the wheat anymore? The scent of maritime pines mixed with the sound of cicadas in the summer heat. Yes, because when you don’t just think about moving to the next step of the social ladder, the senses mix, creating indissoluble bonds. For example, I realized that my brain links certain smells to certain sounds and vice versa, as well as the sensation of dry heat on the skin, my brain links it to certain colors and so on.

And yet for all these years I seem to have been running in the opposite direction. City, office, social conventions (which I am allergic to, ask my partner to confirm), technique and reasoning.

Which is the definition of a mental wank. That is, if you look closely, when the will takes over, and tries in every way to control every aspect of your life, it does nothing but close you in the swirling circle of your self-referential thought, which, to simplify, makes you live in a gigantic mental saw, impenetrable, in fact, by any external stimulus, except those filtered by the great mental saw itself.

The beauty is that spontaneous people are then seen as naïve, considered almost with compassion by those who, from the height of their own pragmatic and technocratic thinking, actually know how the world works. But I’m no longer really convinced that this is the case.

I therefore thought that a good starting point was to throw a ton of money into an operation that is in fact based on irrational principles, but which was based on motivations and principles totally opposite to those that guided me in my previous life.

To see how it will end, all you have to do is continue to follow me here, and on Hunum’s social channels.

Until next time!