In March 2017, an international panel awarded the illustrations that were the starting point for this book the International Award for Illustration at the Bologna Child and Young Adult Book Fair, the most prestigious prize in this field. The untamed natural world is an amazing place. Entering it is like crossing an invisible threshold. The world is changing around us and our identities are uncertain. Under the heavens something is being unleashed, a silent storm, perhaps the link to a presence that has always lived with us. Getting lost in a mountain, any mountain, also means losing something of what we were in our former lives. When we return, as if in a dream, the world we know is unrecognisable for a few moments. And we clearly feel that for a brief period we were something else.