EDITORIAL

Multifaceted, diverse, changing through time and in this very instant, depending on the different positions of sender and recipient, the echo, multiplying the infinite meanings, diffuses amongst the countless subjective values, diversified, unique and unrepeatable. Where the most varied synaesthetic impressions
accumulate and overlap, fragmented words whisper, dormant images abruptly re-emerge. Silence and undertones, imperceptible nuances of thoughts and recurring glimpses. It is a filter, a store, a resource. Unlike space, the echo has no contours and it has no borders because, just like space, the echo is consubstantial with everything.

The magic of places is everywhere.
Another little suave voice diffuses its melody from the northern magic world of the "tonttu", the assistants of Santa Claus, and it is like an echo which becomes more and more persistent and fascinating.
It tells us about the throbbing life under the snow, of ancient sagas and medieval legends read at the warmness of a fireplace. This suave voice becomes braver and more wheedling every moment, it reaches every winding path of the unlimited, snow-white widths. Where the wind's voice is the "Leitmotiv" of the long, northern winter.
The magic of places is everywhere you only need to catch it, but it is more alive where the nature is stronger than the man, in the difficulties of a cruel weather, in the long nights, in the asperities of an unfertile earth.
I have loved and missed so much this mother-nature and found it thousands of kilometres from my home, but it is always a pleasure to see how many things we learn from it.
Is there anything more beautiful than reading, in a cold and dark winter evening, "L'eco delle Dolomiti"?
Discovering another time the untouched feelings of my childhood: the hopes, the joy and the fear that my mountain gave me leaving an indelible mark on me. Now I feel that all these sensations are inside me together with the mountain's strength, tenacity and rectitude.
Reading these pages is retracing my steps, going back to the birth, to my native village, to the peace of my childhood; it means finding again the life's ethics and the dream of an unwasted existence.
With a little bit nostalgia in my heart and in my eyes, I still read some sentences and in them I feel the mountains' echo which builds the mind and brings consolations to the heart.

Cristina Maffei Suomi, Tampere, Finland 2006