These supplies are here for people who might be in difficulty in the mountains.
These supplies are here for people who might be in difficulty in the mountains.
But who are they, tell me, these wanderers, even more fleeting than we ourselves?
Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, Fifth Elegy.
I wouldn’t have given much attention to Jacques’ photographs, showing a stone house that seems abandoned, clothes behind a window and scraps of food scattered about, if not for the message that accompanied them:
This cabin is located in the Alps, at the Col de l’Échelle at an altitude of 1,762 metres, right on the border between France and Italy, between Briançon and Bardonnechia. It is a migrant route, mainly for Africans. They come on foot, even in winter.
Between 2018 and 2020, harsh repression targeted them. The police, reinforced by the national gendarmerie, would send them back to the Italian border. The far-right group ’Génération identitaire’ blocked access to the pass for an entire weekend. Those same years, the concept of 'solidarity crime' took hold. People were arrested and charged for helping these migrants, for giving them lifts to safer places. A Swiss reporter enquiring in the area was taken into custody by the police; there was an article about it in the Geneva newspaper Le Temps.
Inside the cabin, it’s very dark. There is food and clothes left by anonymous people for these travelers. The word "migrants" isn’t used on the handwritten sign intended for non-migrant passers-by, asking them to leave what they find untouched, for “people who might be in difficulty in the mountains."
That day, there were lots of clothes. We had brought some a few years ago.
One last thing: as I was getting back into my car, a gendarmerie vehicle arrived and parked across from the cabin.
Other than that, it’s a perfect spot for a summer picnic. French and Italian families flock there on weekends.
I focus on Jacques’ photos, zooming in as much as possible until I can make out the full message above the jar of Nutella and the tins of food:
“These supplies are here for people who might be in difficulty in the mountains.
Please leave them in place.
The Town Hall.”
In September 2024, the news related to the Col de l’Échelle and my discovery of this little house on the photos turned out to be denser than I had expected:
Between September 16th and September 23rd, Mountain Wilderness, a mountain preservation association, hauled away two tons of military material which had been sitting at the Col de l’Échelle since the Second World War. Angle irons with bases cemented deep into the ground and old Italian barbed wire fences - dangerous for both hikers and wildlife.
On September 11th and 12th, the mountain sports community and the *Tous Migrants* (All Migrants) association teamed up. They stretched a 500 metre long slackline across the pass. "This line is symbolic," said a spokesperson for the association, whose banners were suspended in the air for the filming of the movie *Passages*. The film will bring two realities – sports and migration, into one same space.
On September 23rd, the new French Home Secretary Bruno Retailleau, spelled out his priorities: "put a stop to illegal entries" and "increase deportations."
