Alice Montanha
Alice took root in the mountains like an ancient tree. She knewshe loved almost everything about that landscape inof Portugal, where she now lives, surrounded by nature, far from roads and utilities, in a way autautonomouslyand self-sufficient. She was born there, near the place where she chose to live with her husband and children. But she didn’t settle down without first exploring other rivers, other mountains, other cities, and atis other countries. She has experienced a great deal, and everything she knows comes from what she has touched and felt, from what she has sought, from what she has learned. She knows, simply, that she continues to search, to experiment.
When I was little, I used to say I wanted to be aa. I used to say it over and over, and even today I don’t know why why, at age 12, he changed course and decided he wantedbe an artist. She enrolled in FineArts in Porto. Art led her to contemplation and reflection. “At first, I really resisted the idea of having to justify everything in terms of concepts. But, later, I found my own way of talking about the things that mattered to me, I forged my own path.”
For his final project, he chose to create a clay sculpture consisting of four pillars and a temple which which he called Ode to Nature. It depicted Portuguese flora and faunas, were thefrom whichthe. In the descriptive synopsis of the play,he wrote: “Human beings is the only one who, by destroying everything around them,destroythemselvesi.” Alice hadn’thad discovered herbalism and the medicinal power of plants (which, she admits today, excites and attracts her the most) and was alreadynoticed men’s propensity to poison with chemical to the herbs that,later, will kill him.
Alice and her husband, André, are named Montanha. The name didn’t come to them through thefamily tree.. It came as one reaches the summit after a long, sweaty, uncertain climb. It came with the crossing, with the renunciation, with the act of letting go of a histinheritedinherited past to start anew, on different ground, with a fresh breath. They call themselves Montanha by choice – by fit, forymbol, by gesture. “The mountain is steady, the mountain remains,” says Alice. “That’s what we felt when we needed to believe it was possible: to live off the land, find a home, build a family.”
In the movie Kagemusha, by Kurosawa, a leader says: “The mountain does not move.” It is this steadfastness that guided them when everything around them seemed fragile, improv. The Sermon on the Mount, in the Gospel of Matthew, did the rest. “I remember that passage,” says Alice. “Whyshould we worry about the clothes we wear? The birds are much better dressed than thanthem. Why worryabout what we have to eat, if animals always have food? Nus werewere in that surrender:a fis that life would give us the necessary.”
It was at that mthat that they got married. Without a signed, with . In a corner of theSerra da Estrela, by the Zêzere, where liesthey lived. Their witnesses were the plants, the trees, a beehive, and the dog, Lobita. They married the land. They married the act of. Then came the children and, with them, the decision to carry on the name: Aldo Montanha and Celeste Montanha. “Theytold us that it couldn’t be, that“Mountain”wasn’t a name. But if there’s a Star, if there’s Sea, thenwhy'Mountain'? Mountain?…”
The name stuck. Roots that run deep, like the trees planted in the ground where they live. They are building a agricultural–forest. Their concern is to regenerate the soil, to fertilize the earth. Alice speaks to the ground through her words. Not as someone who treads on it, but as someone who wants to interpret it. She knows the plants, she knows thetheirnamess, their toxicity, and their secrets.
Talk about digitalis as if speaking of an ancient lesson – a planttoxictoxic and powerful plant, which can heal or kill, and which reminds us that not everything that is natural is harmless, but everything can beisradioactive,if used well. It speaks of soapwort, elderberry, and saponaria, the stinging nettle, and thesage. She knows them all,knows them all. He makes creams and infusions, syrups and distillates. She points to oak trees and vines, shows how the latter can climb up the former, how the old days taught us so much, and how we’re almost determined to ruining it all.
Yet she and her family refuse to give up. They have stepped away from every network except the one that still connects them to the wider world: Instagram and YouTube. Through those channels, they quietly lead by example, spreading their message not through preaching, but through the lives they choose to live. They do not see themselves as missionaries or evangelists. Instead, they move like sowers crossing a field, leaving furrows of example and words that will one day sprout when the season is right. “We and nature have gradually drifted apart. Along the way, we made mistakes. We complicated everything, turning what was once simple into something confusing and difficult. Yet this—this relationship with the landscape, with plants, with the land itself—is simple. It may seem complex, but at heart it is wonderfully simple,” says André.
It’s simple because that’s what it’s all about: maintaining a close relationship with the landscape, frequentpresence, of presencebeing. And making the most of what it offers. The basket she carries on her back and the shears hanging from her belt are the tools with which, every day, maintainskeepsthat relationship.
