Coming Full Circle -- Sella Ronda, Dolomites (30 Dec 2017)

They say that sometimes life goes around in circles. You move forward with purpose, always on new terrain, and end up where you started.

Cyclists know a thing or two about that. Giro d'Italia, Vuelta de Espana, Tour de France.

This year has seen its fair share of full circles. You take a job, you leave a job. You close your advisory boutique, you reopen your advisory boutique. You take the family to the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, and you haul them back to the grey laden skies of Warsaw. You make new friends, you lose old friends.

Sometime you ignore what the mathematicians and physicists would have you believe, and you try to square a circle. With mixed success. Sometimes you come to a full stop. Often you are forced into an about face. And yet.

On this penultimate day of the year I wanted to close another circle, facile by comparison, the magical Sella Ronda in the Dolomites, clockwise, heart on the left, mountain on the right. Riding long ski lifts is like riding a motorcycle, the mind has room to roam freely.

Bright and early and chilly start, the sun blinking at me across the mighty mountain. Valley after valley, vista after vista, many sun swept, others windy. 'Una bella giornata' as the Italians would say. Halfway through the morning the news that the clockwise circuit is broken, 'un guasto tecnico'. We persevere and by the time Arrabba is reached in plain sunlight, the obstacle has disappeared. But at Canazei, about halfway around, a big weather front of clouds and precipitation stares me in the face. Better to do yet another about face and return to the sunny side ...

When he died, Goethe is reported to have said 'more light!'

I will take that, even in this life.

And as you enter 2018, I wish you sun, a sunny disposition, and the courage to try to square the circle, no matter what the obstacles.

Buon anno amici!