Michele is one of those people who has lived at least three lives in one.
The first was born and grew up until the age of twenty in the harsh mountains of Friuli, running in the woods, bathing in streams and playing ice hockey.
The second moves first to Rome and then to Livorno, but actually moves around the world a bit, because until the early 90’s Michele is part of the Fire Brigade’s sports group. He is a wrestler and thanks to the fight he travels a lot, so much so that in 1984 he also participates in the Los Angeles Olympics.
The third comes later, when the competition ceases and although initially remaining in the Fire Brigade, he returned to his homeland, re-embracing his origins thanks to the kitchen, opening and managing the Osteria Ai Ors still in full activity.
And it is here that we met, to listen to his story. One of those that you would listen to for hours and hours.
Michele was waiting for us sitting on a bench outside his inn. A large man, with a strong physique, but with clear eyes that encapsulate a boundless shyness and emotionality.
We talked for two hours and then a sort of magic happened: Michele let us enter in a piece of his world, made of a gym, a bath and a sauna that he built with his own hands collecting wood and stones with which everything is built.
He took us into that part of life that is suspended between his past and his present. He no longer fights, of course, but this does not mean that the body should be abandoned to itself.
Michele is active: he trains, he bathes in streams, he builds anything with his hands. He is one of those stories that you would like to tell in his complexity, in his daily life, because it is precisely in the simplicities that you can find the stories that enter our souls the most.
Michele is the water that flows in the stream behind his house and the wood of the trees that rise on the slopes of the mountains that surround him: he is a free spirit, but with roots firmly planted in the ground.
