I am Manuel Chiacchiararelli, 42 years old, writer and photographer, and this is the site of my greatest adventure, until now, which will lead me to re-discover myself and the beauties of Italian Mountains and Parks.
I always felt so close to Nature, I always desired to get closer to the wild, even if, unfortunately, I’ve always been tied up — by the common life — to actually make this step.
And I’ve been like this, suspended between the two worlds trying to find a balance without drawing in the normality and, at the same time, finding escape and shelter in Nature as much as I could.
For many years I tried to find my way, first in the different places where I lived (I was born in Rome but I grow up in Dolomites where I felt in love in mountains and trekking; then I’ve been living in Denmark and since 2010 I’m in Malmö, Sweden), then by the different jobs I had (butcher, carpenter, delivery man, kitchen chef, warehouse worker, team leader, freight broker and even police agent at Italian Guardia di Finanza…) wasting time maybe, or just getting knowledge and experiences, sometimes negative, which always led me to the same conclusion: why wasting time, wasting life, doing something I don’t love when I have the universe, inside and outside me, to discover?
The turning point has been the birth of my daughter Lara, in 2016, because it woke me up from the numbness I was living in — endlessly repeating to myself “Don’t worry Manuel, it will go away and the day will come when everything will feel right…” — let me understand I didn’t have any excuses anymore.
Yes, because if I could deal with the fact I was wasting my life, I could not accept that my unhappiness and dissatisfaction could affect negatively my daughter life and family life.
The depression first, and a panick attack after, led me to drop the bomb no one would expect from me by that time: I left the job, I left the economical safety, to follow my dreams and passions (photography and writing) to find again my happiness and to give a better future to my family.
And after I recovered from the depression, after I escaped from those chain, I found again a dream of mine, that I had since I was young, and I decided to fulfil it.
Who or what could stop me now?
And this is WANDERING ITALIA: my dream, my way to find myself, to test myself and to find out if the call of the wild was just an utopia of mine; it’s my possibility to find my own way and to show to my daughter that everything is possible and to never stop chasing her happiness and dreams!
