Pietro and Bruno search for the lost goats after an early snowfall disrupts a summer grazing plan. The excursion turns an errand into a rare encounter with winter in the mountains Pietro knows only from brief summer visits. Following Bruno through snow that hides the path, Pietro sees both his friend’s familiarity with the terrain and the difference between them: Bruno knows how to proceed, while Pietro has to trust his footprints. The goats are all found, but the memory also marks the approach of Pietro’s departure from Grana and a long interval in which the two boys will not meet.

An unexpected summons

One clear Sunday, as Pietro and his mother are having breakfast, Bruno appears at the balcony and invites him into the mountains. His uncle has acquired goats and let them graze freely near the alpine pasture, expecting to check on them from a distance with binoculars. After snow falls during the herd’s first nights on the mountain, however, the uncle cannot find them. Bruno relays the plan and its failure as another of his uncle’s harebrained schemes: the goats may have sheltered in a hollow or gone behind a passing herd of ibexes.

Bruno now has an old, rusty motorbike without number plates. The boys ride it up toward the farmstead, ducking beneath low larch branches and splashing through puddles. Beyond the uncle’s meadows, they follow a straight track through stony grass marked by goat droppings, then climb a bank of rhododendrons and fallen rock beside a nearly dry stream. Snow begins as they go higher. The journey moves abruptly from muddy tracks and late-season grass into conditions neither boy has encountered on this outing before.

Following Bruno through the snow

Pietro has known the mountains mainly in a short summer: something like spring at the beginning of July and autumn by the end of August. He and Bruno had talked about winter when Pietro was a child, especially as his return to the city approached. Bruno had warned that winter meant nothing but snow, while Pietro had wanted to see it. Now the snow is fresh and soft rather than the frozen snow of high gorges. It soaks Pietro’s shoes and covers the route, bushes, holes, and stones. Even the wildflowers of August are compressed into his footprints.

With little experience on such ground, Pietro follows Bruno by stepping into the marks he has made. The familiar pattern of their friendship takes physical form: Bruno leads, and Pietro keeps close behind, unable to read the mountain by the memory or instinct that guides his companion. When they reach a ridge overlooking the far side, a turn in the wind carries the sound of bells. The goats have taken shelter lower down, beneath the first rocks.

Finding and bringing back the herd

The search ends without loss. The goats are gathered in groups of three or four in openings in the snow, mothers with their kids, and Bruno counts them to confirm that every animal is present. They are less obedient than cattle, and some have become feral after a summer on the mountain. On the way back, Bruno shouts to keep them together, throws snowballs at those that stray, and curses his uncle’s plan. The return follows their own tracks to the ridge before the boys lead the noisy, unruly procession down over the snow.

By about midday they reach grass again, and the change feels like a return to summer. Hungry, the goats scatter across the meadow. Pietro and Bruno run down too—not because they have to hurry, but because rushing downhill is how they have always enjoyed being in the mountains. The search has required them to move carefully through unfamiliar snow; the descent restores a shared, exhilarating habit. Their different abilities remain visible, but so does their ease together: the errand ends in companionship rather than in a reckoning over who led or who followed.

Praise, farewell, and hindsight

At the motorbike, Bruno tells Pietro that he has watched him rock climbing and thinks he is good at it. Pietro says he only started that summer. The recognition links the search to another change in their friendship: Bruno has noticed a skill Pietro is developing, and the two boys can speak about it directly after spending the day together. The episode thus offers more than a successful recovery of the herd; it records Bruno’s attention to Pietro and Pietro’s growing engagement with the mountains.

The memory stands close to the end of Pietro’s summers in Grana. In the end-of-summer farewell, Bruno straddles the motorbike, gets it started after several attempts, raises a hand, and revs away with a puff of black exhaust. Pietro waves back after Bruno has stopped looking. He later understands that they would not meet again for a very long time: he would return only briefly the following year, at seventeen, and then stop going to Grana. The long line of tracks left in the snow becomes the image through which he remembers the outing—not as a promise that they would remain together, but as a visible trace of a path shared just before their lives diverged.