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Sandra Roberts
Originally from the UK, I now live in the Ciociaria area of Lazio in Italy. As an outdoor photographer my photographs span the divide between rural and urban locations and focus on the impact man has made on the landscape. I am interested in the built structures and marks mans behaviour has made to the environment.
This set of images were taken whilst walking around the closed ski resort of Campocatino in Central Italy, on the day before Italy put in further lockdown restrictions for the Christmas holidays 2020. The weather and stillness of the empty resort created an atmosphere and strong emotional response in me that inspired me to write the following poem.
When The Inclement Times Refrain
Someone had parked a caravan
by the path for trekkers,
in the time of blue skies; of travel brochures.
But today was cold,
the air an icy mist, raw with ethereal light.
How often I wondered,
did the path become impassable?
Have lives become unbearable
lost in this harsh white cloak?
In the snow gone blue with cold
tyre tracks and footsteps whisper
their frosty signs of lonely exploration.
Are the hotels full of ghosts?
The rooms filled with the smell of lockdown stillness,
of icy spectres and pre-covid hugs.
Had I a window, a portal to christmases past
to the joy and laughter, of skiing
and clowning companions exhilarated, on ambitious pistes.
But on the raw bleak path, only the caravan freezing
promotes the optimism of blue skies and kind
when groups of friends will meet,
when the inclement times refrain.
