Dario Laganà went on a 1000 km walk in Norway, and produced the short film Like a Fern Between Rocks, documenting this solitary, nomadic experience.

This work is one of the shortlisted pieces for the Marŝarto Awards 2025.  Dario earlier wrote about his experience in A loud solitude, and goes deeper into his experience, below.

All of my projects stem from a simple desire to satisfy my curiosity. They are not intended for replication or to provide others with a set of instructions to follow. They are about giving body to my questions and reinforcing the idea that by changing the way we perceive the world and nature, we can derive different outcomes.

When we talk about climate change or saving the environment, it feels to me somehow abstract and distant. The gap between us and what we want to protect is too wide. In On Time and Water Andri Snær Magnason describes this well: “[…] words and concepts need time to grow in cultures. Climate and nature are vast ideas, full of science, history, and complexity. The larger they appear, the harder it becomes for us to connect to them and act.”

This is where I try to bring in the human element. I place my body inside these environmental systems and build a personal, emotional narrative around them. I travel for myself, but by doing so, I also show others that the environment exists, that nature is real and close, not just a backdrop. 

Ferns are strong plants that can grow quickly and are resilient. I have seen them growing between cracks in the mountains, while in rainforests they become huge and beautiful. But they can also thrive in uncertain territories, even near glaciers, if they have the opportunity.

The idea of Like a Fern Between Rocks came to me while observing nature during my trip to Norway — a little nomadic experiment covering 1000 km on foot. During the trip I encountered more ferns than humans, so I decided to celebrate their resilience by naming my short film after them as we were both so small, trying to resist, in the immensity of a rocky landscape.

I started the trip as a backup plan for a larger project rescheduled for 2026 (set in Iceland), but in retrospect, it was a great decision, as I consider it as a huge rehearsal of what I meant to do, but with a smaller impact. Norway was hard but a great strategic choice, as I could walk for as long as I wanted, and if things went badly, I could easily take a ferry or train back to my starting point. I was also curious because it’s not a popular walking destination, the country is cold, dispersive and you can go from the fjords to the glaciers in just one day of walking (with more than 900 meters in elevation difference), with a lot of ups and downs and you have to cross lots of long car tunnels or take long detours to avoid them.

The paradox is that my work becomes images, flat objects. I put my body into the system, but what people see is only the result. Unless I take people with me, there is always a gap between my experience and their perception. To balance this, I decided to film myself walking. Walking is not just a method; it is part of the meaning. It slows me down, it ties the work to time spent in nature, not just to images. So, for a change, I decided that a film would be more appropriate than a work based on pictures.

As a photographer, everytime I decide to travel, I already start with a 7kg backpack of equipment, and on long trips it’s not feasible to carry all that, plus a sleeping bag, clothes and food, on your shoulders. So I opted for a DIY solution: I bought and modified a goods trolley that you can get from any hardware store. I could have bought one, but they were expensive, bulky, heavy, and if they broke, you wouldn’t have the knowledge to repair them yourself.

Having already tested the trolley on Shetland, I was confident that this longer test would be positive and give me a better idea of how to approach the territory. However, the real test was the nomadic experiment of carrying everything with me: my tent, as well as food and water. But, I was wrong. No matter how long you prepare, when you arrive in a new place, things will surprise you. If you are not careful, the trip might end quickly. I broke the trolley several times due to some mistakes in my preparation, I lost a wheel on the road and the sticks along the trolley broke because the centre of gravity was too high. Although I don’t like showing pain in the film to create tension, I couldn’t avoid including a few scenes to show the audience how tense it is to walk like this.

The film itself is a revelation to me. For my first attempt, it has already been selected for two festivals in the UK. Rather than starting with a plot, I began with a conceptual map. Before setting off on my trip, I made a list of concepts and topics that I wanted to explore and express during my month alone. These included the balance between solitude and loneliness, the sense of home, the difference between what I do and pilgrimage, and exposure to nature. It had a strong philosophical preparation for a trip that was intended to be very physical, but I ran it as a scientific experiment on my body and on my brain.

The idea was simple: to see if these prepared concepts would have a voice during the trip and change over the days. As I filmed myself reflecting on them, I recorded my voice with my phone. I wasn’t ready to do a voice-over, and I thought the intensity of the trip would be a better vehicle for these concepts. 

The first time I decided to measure the distance of a journey in kilometers was in the Shetlands. I had just begun to imagine walking longer distances and needed a goal, since I was not sure. So with the map of the islands in hand, I calculated the distance from the southernmost to the northernmost point: about 400 km, including some detours. That became my target, even though the journey ended up being longer, with a final count of 560 km, proving that distances on paper rarely match the reality of the road.

These calculations are useful only for estimating the minimum number of days, but beyond that they lose much of their meaning. Twenty kilometers in the mountains are not the same as twenty kilometers on flat ground, and pulling a cart up 900 meters of elevation in a single day is nothing like a week of walking across a flat valley. This is where what Frédéric Gros calls gravity comes in: the weight of ourselves, of our belongings, of the mountain itself.

Beyond the practical, the rest is vanity: that hero complex Rebecca Solnit describes so well. In walking, there is little difference between having covered 800, 1000, or 1500 km, because one of the most beautiful aspects of the experience is this kind of samsara: each day matters only for itself, while the previous one has already disappeared, much like a roulette spin where the last number drawn has no bearing on the next.

And yet, walking 1000 km leaves a very precise imprint on the body: a memory that allows you to step outside yourself and see things from a distance, before returning to your own perspective. If tomorrow someone asked me to set out for 100 km, my body and my mind would already know, before even beginning, what that truly means, as the next trip of 3000 km already started to sediment in my perspective.

A journey engraves itself into the body and the brain as muscular memory, but also as emotional memory. Difficulties like long heavy rain, cold, walking against the wind, hunger, sore shoes, bad roads, or trucks roaring by; anything that breaks the idyllic image of the path we imagined, remind us of the energy required from the very beginning to reach the end.

After Norway, I finally have an answer: what 1000 km measure inside me.

The winner and honourable mention of the Marŝarto Awards 2025 will be announced in early 2026.