Academia Peregini’s Philosophy
Academia
Peregrini expresses a different way of sharing spare-time among hiking
enthusiasts.
Hiking
is good and safe for both mind and body. It’s difficult to explain: you need to
experience it.
Hiking
is a particular cognitive experience within everybody’s reach.
It
teaches you to think different (even about yourself), doing one of the most natural
things you can do.
When
our group (the peregrini) hike
together, usually on Sundays, we are happy and carefree.
Our
hiking is uncompetitive: we do it in a playful disposition, everyone choosing
their own pace and resting whenever they want.
Just
because walking is a slow action, it encourages observation and helps to
meditate.
Moving
in complete autonomy, free from technological dependency, involves a group of
sensory activities that may be an antidote to the tensions of everyday-life.
It
is a good way to reconsider your own physical limits and the sense of labour
(which has practically disappeared from our technological world), and to
appreciate distances gained step by step.
In
the past physical work was very hard and left no time for useless psychological
sophisms.
Nowadays,
the progressive passage from physical efforts to creative tasks or jobs of
responsibility brought us to a psychological tiredness that never leaves us,
even in our spare-time, and prevents us from devoting ourselves to our
interests.
We
discovered that hiking is a good medicine for this kind of modern disease.
It
was six years ago that Academia Peregrini made its first steps.
On
Sunday 1 October 2000 two peregrini,
Fabio Cattaneo and Francesco De Vecchi, hiked for
After
their walk, they decided to print two diplomas giving themselves the title of homo peregrinus.
The
idea was then shared with other friends who enthusiastically took part in new
walks, and, from that moment on, we have made loads of steps through the ways
of our region and in other parts of
Besides,
the number of peregrini has grown
dramatically: we are now about 400, everyone with their own diploma.
And
we have just started walking…