Nova Lima at the end of the tunnel

Versão em português 

Version en français 

I am a native of the mountains, for sure. My first steps, and those that followed, were on the ground of a city with altitudes varying between 800 and 1100 m above sea level, from which chains of hills rise up to 500 m or less, summing approximately 1500 m above sea level at the highest points. It is about climbing and going down the hills wherever we go, with the permanent presence of a wall gracing the horizon... so beautiful!

But we know we are from mountains for many reasons, not necessary to measure in meters; among so many of them, the air we breathe. It is lighter, and sometimes it asks for a deep breath, expanding the lungs with a fresh breeze, wanting to fly. It is a compulsory respiratory physiotherapy. The sigh is... natural, when some sadness comes, we already know how to sigh, it is normal.

I realized this difference even more after I moved. For many years now I have been living almost at sea level, although far from the sea, between 50 and 100 meters of altitude, in a place with flat relief, with wide vision, where the beautiful and amazing ballet of the clouds is exposed, literally in the open air – but this is another story. The fact is that I have noticed I do not sigh more as I did before. The atmosphere here is markedly denser, it gives me the impression I could take a piece of air with my hands – "de l'air à couper au couteau". It has too much oxygen; I was not accustomed to such a privilege.

The mountains draw and delimit our little world. When I was very young, I thought the world ended up on the mountain. I read the text of a writer, also from Minas Gerais, who said the same thing - I realized I was not alone in this thought, and I decided to share it 😊. In fact, I recommend you reading Elisa Santana's text, in Luzias, in Portuguese(click here), lucid, poetic, pained by the effects of mining in Minas Gerais.

This memory thinking the world ended up on the mountain next to our house is quite remote, I don't know how old I was. I could not imagine what might exist behind it; when my older brothers and sister climbed the hill, I was fearful for them, not knowing exactly why. Since my parents didn’t let me go with them, because I was very young, maybe I had concluded there would be some danger. Our house was very close to the hill and I thought we were near the end of the world. Today, a hypothesis came to my mind, that perhaps I had heard someone saying that we lived "at the end of the world", in the sense of a place not good for living, and I would have understood literally, I don’t know... 😂 - in fact, there were members of the family not close who didn’t appreciate where our house was located.

One day I heard my father saying that if we had a tunnel in the mountains, we would arrive in Nova Lima. I guess he was referring to another place in Belo Horizonte, but I thought he was talking about our hill. It was like an unveiling for me - the world existed on the other side too! But I did not say anything to anyone; I was embarrassed about what I had thought before, which seemed to me, then, a childish absurdity. Today, reading the text of the writer Elisa Santana, I remembered our neighbour, the "end of the world", and this light at the end of the tunnel – Nova Lima.

What I could not imagine is that those mountains, so intrinsic to me, being part of my soul, as said so beautifully by the writer, would be destroyed one day and turned into toxic and deadly mud for us. I hope we have a light at the end of the tunnel to end these tailing dams so our beloved mountains do not represent the end of the world for people of Minas Gerais.
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 Related link:
Tailing dams