Zocchi hamlet

“One afternoon I was roaming through pastures and hills with my dog, and when we reached the neighbourhood of the Stöcke hamlet I put the leash back on it because, on the meadows freshy mown, the chickens were eating. As I approached the four houses, I noticed a large square stone that served as a step at the entrance to a kitchen garden. The large stones that bear the marks of human labour always fascinate me, and I was surprised to see a date engraved on this one, “1602,” which for our little fatherland, where the Great War has upset everything, is a quite remote date.”

From “Amore di confine” (Border love) “Il tesoro negli stivali” (The treasure in the boots).

The context

The writer sets in the house with the engraved stone the story of a man who, like many villagers, in the 19th century went to work in the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in his case in the silver mines of Slovakia. Taking home a crumb of silver every day, at the end of his career he had put together a small fortune, and so when he returned to his hamlet he learned to melt the metal, he built a furnace, some crucibles and moulds and, once excavated a hidden room in the rock, he began to churn out, sparingly, the silver thalers of Franz Joseph, who allowed him to live out his retirement in peace.

The route

From hamlet Zocchi to Bertigo.

The hamlet of the short story, now called Zocchi (“stumps”), is located east of the Ossario (Ossuary), less than three kilometres from the centre, along a secondary road (via Fiume) which, starting from Via Matteotti, through vast meadows heads to east, until reaching the road that leads from Gallio to Turcio and then to Bassano. The hamlet is crossed, the early morning of the Rogazione (Rogation), by the procession of the believers heading towards Bertigo. There the CAI path 805 passes too, which, starting from the Military Memorial, reconstructs the journey completed in the summer of 1944 by Major Harold William Tilman to reach the Allied commands in the area of Falcade, of which he was responsible, after being parachuted at Granezza. After reaching Bertigo, the Alta Via Tilman goes up towards the ridge (1,252 m) between the Cima Echar and Valbella, then reaches Col del Rosso and Frazione Sasso (see itinerary). Making base on the square of the Ossario you can use the path no. 805, which comes out on the road between the top and the bottom of the hamlet, and for the return you can take the parallel path on the left after about 200 meters, which brings back to the square passing through Casa del Ferro.