On his journey from Vienna to his homeland South Tyrol, Reinhold Messner first travels through the cold Eastern Alps. Full of spirits, Sepp Holzer, the “rebel farmer”, demonstrates how you can let nature work for you in mixed cultivation. On his farm, he grows fruit that you would never expect at such an altitude, from apricots to lemons. Creative and inventive as they are, the mountain dwellers of the Austrian Alps have turned skiing into a success story as well as a big business. In the idyllic Ötz valley, Messner encounters two men who definitely love their homeland, though in different and extreme ways: the tourism manager Jakob Falk and the local historian Hans Haid. Nearly hundred years ago, the Alps between Austria and Italy, exactly the Dolomites, were theatre of war. In his mountain museum in the castle Sigmundskron, Reinhold Messner talks about the peaceful development in South Tyrol. The film ends with one of the numerous spectacular shots, a scenic flight around Messner’s castle Juval.