In a world where the desire to explore has turned into a prêt-à-porter trend, the symbolic value of travel itself has been emptied of meaning...
From my earliest travels, I tried to carve out some meaning for my wanderings. It wasn't a superhuman feat, but a reflection on the perception of places, in relation to images, sounds, orography (perceived through muscular effort), and the composition of the terrain (felt as creaking, fatigue in the limbs and the mechanical vehicle, subjected to constant testing, modeled on endurance racing).
The adventure began months before departure , when I imagined and planned the trip. I gathered ideas and insights that, once plotted on the map, defined a route. Old school maps, road maps, and geographical charts, afternoons spent at the library and at the Touring Club.
We're talking about more than 20 years ago, in a world without navigators where people were creative; I personally would then photocopy the itinerary onto waterproof A4 sheets of paper, thus reducing it to a sort of chessboard to take on trips. Sometimes, however, the images would fade, and then it was a pain.