Prayer flags

Prayer flags bring the memory of Nepal into Pietro’s life at Grana, where their changing colors and movement in the wind make distant experience visible beside the Barma mountain house. Hung first between larch trees and later between the rock face and the house, they recur as a personal adornment of the landscape, a reminder of travel, and a quiet presence above the memorial to Giovanni Guasti. Their return, replacement, and contrast with a struggling pine tree give them meanings grounded in both the durability and the vulnerability of living things.

Appearance and First Placement

The year after traveling to Nepal, Pietro returns to Grana with a string of prayer flags and hangs it between two larch trees, where the flags can be seen through the house window. Blue, white, red, green, and yellow stand for ether, air, fire, water, and earth. The sequence gives their color a stated meaning, while their visible position ties that meaning to a particular place: the trees beside the house and the landscape beyond its window.

Pietro often watches the flags in the afternoon as they respond to the wind of the Alps and dance among the branches. Their movement brings Nepal into the mountain setting without making the two places identical. The memories they carry are vivid and warm; against them, the old mountains seem more desolate, marked by derelict huts and ruins. The flags thus make an immediate contrast between remembered travel and the neglected landscape Pietro sees around him. They do not erase the ruins; their brightness sharpens his perception of them.

Renewal at the House

The flags do not remain unchanged. By the time Pietro is repairing the house, the first string has faded in sun and rain and been torn by the wind. He takes it down and burns it in the stove, then hangs a new set. The replacement marks a return to the same practice, but not to the same material object: weather has altered the first flags, and their end is followed by another act of hanging them.

This time Pietro strings the new flags between the rock face and a corner of the house, rather than between the larch trees. He has the stupas he saw in Nepal in mind as he chooses their position. They now dance above his father’s epitaph, bringing the remembered country into direct relation with the memorial at home. The flags seem to bless Giovanni Guasti, although the account presents this as Pietro’s perception of their appearance, not as a claim about what the flags can literally do. Their placement gives the house’s repair and its remembrance of the dead a shared visual setting.

Prayer, Fortune, and Belief

Bruno notices the new flags while he and Pietro work on the roof and asks what is written on them. Pietro explains that they are prayers for good fortune, prosperity, peace, and harmony. Bruno asks whether he believes in good fortune; Pietro’s answer distinguishes belief in their effects from the mood they create. The flags put him in a good mood, and that is enough for him. Bruno accepts this response.

The exchange keeps the flags’ significance intimate and practical. Their presence does not depend on a demonstrated promise of prosperity or peace. They matter to Pietro partly because they lift his spirits, and because their familiar movement gives the repaired house a connection to Nepal. The conversation also makes the flags part of the friends’ shared life at Barma: Bruno asks about them, Pietro explains them, and their brief discussion unfolds as the two men work together on the roof.

Memory and the Alpine Landscape

The flags’ position above Giovanni Guasti’s memorial inscription joins a traveling memory to a family act of remembrance. The inscription reads, “IN MEMORY IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL REFUGE.” The flags do not replace this memorial; they move in the wind above it, so that remembrance is associated with both the fixed words on the rock and the changing fabric overhead. The first set’s fading and tearing also prevent the image from becoming one of permanent preservation: the flags themselves weather, are burned, and must be replaced.

A small Swiss pine offers a related but distinct image of endurance. Pietro checks on it after changing the flags and finds it still alive, delicate and contorted, as it has been since it was transplanted. It is approaching its seventh winter. Unlike the flags, which Pietro associates with good fortune, prosperity, peace, and harmony, the pine suggests tenacity and a clinging to life. He considers these qualities perhaps less valued in Nepal than in the Alps. Set beside one another, the flags and the pine give the mountain house two different forms of persistence: one renewed through an intentional act, the other continuing in a precarious, altered shape. Together they locate Pietro’s memories of Nepal within the daily work, weather, and attachments of his life in Grana.