Before I was born, Stefano and Maurizio were the names at the top of my parents’ list. But something happened on the day I was born. When the nurse asked my mother what name she should write on the little bracelet she was about to place around my tiny wrist, my mother replied: “Silvano.”

Silvano means “dweller of the woods and forests.” And among woods and forests, I have always felt at ease, at home. In the woods, in the mountains, I have always sought peace and tranquillity. I have always tried to rediscover that part of myself that is truer, wilder and more ancestral. Walking through a beech forest, knowing that I was surrounded by silent presences — roe deer, red deer, foxes, birds of prey by day and by night — gave me an almost magical feeling.

Today, however, as the planet grows warmer and summer temperatures become increasingly difficult to bear, more and more people are seeking refuge in the coolness of the mountains. And the mountains, once largely overlooked or even unknown to many, suddenly become a tourist attraction. Rough dirt roads give way to surfaces as smooth as billiard tables, covered in black asphalt to make access easier for tourists and their vehicles.

Trees along the roadsides are uprooted, without too much concern, so that they do not obstruct the way or allow their branches to scratch the expensive SUVs of those heading to the mountain huts. The malghe, once places where butter and cheese were produced, are increasingly transformed into venues for social life, where people enjoy elaborate dishes and drinks in company, surrounded by loud music with rhythms more suited to a nightclub. What does it matter if those very same majestic trees help relieve the heat that grows more intense with every passing year?

I have seen motorcycles venturing into the woods at night, presumably in search of some kind of thrill. It seems that today everything has to be fun, exciting, adrenaline-fuelled. We are constantly chasing “fun”, as though even the mountains and the woods had to be turned into one enormous amusement park. I have always preferred profound emotions to entertainment.

Today I walk through these woods — once my woods — but I no longer sense the presence of wild animals. I sense nothing. In the distance, the roar of cars and motorcycles breaks the idyll of the forest, of the highlands.

Even before considering the ethical question, we should ask ourselves what damage these changes will bring. Uprooting trees that have stood for decades, some for nearly a century, bringing new services and new asphalt at a time when we should be protecting and restoring natural environments, can only make matters worse. We continue to consume nature even as we seek refuge in it from the consequences of what we have already consumed elsewhere. And, piece by piece, we risk destroying the very places where we now go in search of relief.

And perhaps, in a not-too-distant future, we and our children will find ourselves living on a devastated, barren planet like the Earth portrayed in Elysium, while the powerful and their children spend their days on a magnificent orbiting space station, green and perfect.