Yes, because in winter even water changes: a slow, lazy lapping replaces summer’s thundering sound of the stream that winds down the valley, while an unreal silence replaces the roaring waterfalls. The smaller brooks entirely dry up or ice over, while bigger ones never “sleep”, thanks to their fast currents that do not allow water to be transformed into ice.
Lakes suffer the same fate: at high altitudes they become silent, thick slabs, although they continue to flow, also in bubbling stretches, on the valley floor. Snow however, besides colouring winter white, also affects the sounds we hear in this season: the soft thud of snow falling off branches in the woods, the dramatic roar when it avalanches down slopes...
However, perhaps the gentlest sound of winter in the Dolomites is the cadenced creaking of our footsteps that sink into the snow, broken by our panting for breath at this altitude during a morning walk. The rest is silence.
