Lazio, 27 July 2020

My friend Damiano is a very special and unique person, one of those I admire the most.
He liked surfing as a kid – he became a surf instructor.
He discovered yoga at a later stage of his life – he became a well-affirmed yoga teacher.
He hiked and climbed up-and-down the Appennini and the Alps, scratching off his nails, eating shit, flying from exposed boulders, breaking his legs. He started learning from the mountains since he was very young with his grandpa who was a big influence to him, and he stayed forever strongly connected to the rural lifestyle of his family that live outside of the madness of the city, in the Ciociaria part of our region, not far from Rome where we live.
And of course, he became an outdoor and rewilding guide.

He is a Dharma bum, a searcher, an examiner of life through his own relationship with the outdoors and adventure.
One of those unique types of people that once they fall in love with something, they go all the way and master the arts of it but leaves a wide-open space to growth and utter learning.
He was once curious about the different ancient cultures, the folklore in the history of mankind – he became an anthropologist.
Not quite the same as me, but we still share so much in common: the love for the ocean, the desire for wilderness, the craving for traveling and adventure, the willingness to immerse ourselves into nature and learn.

When the coronavirus started easing its grip from our everyday life and we were able to get back outside, i was still forced to stay in the premises of Rome, so I started following the lead of Damiano on the activities he organizes with his organization Antropostudio (http://www.antropostudio.org/).

I have traveled throughout India on a tuk-tuk, visited the remote temples of Sri-Lanka, jumped into the waves of the Balinese Ocean, drinking tea in the desert of Merzougà, cycled by the Danube, through Croatia, on the Camino de Santiago... 

I guiltily admit I have never visited much the countryside near my own hometown, Rome.

So this finally was a nice occasion to get out and discover the surrounding of my land and, with the deep knowledge of Damiano, an amazing learning experience.

It was a chance of course to finally get back on the road with my van and share the love for nature to the young generations.


As Damiano sat down to speak, we would gather around and listen. We learned about hermits, the cult of the cavern and its phallic symbolism, the language of nature, how to read a forest and the bio-types that surrounded us, to breathe terpenes that trees release in their silent communication. We climbed mountains and crawled into caves, we spoke with a member of the confraternity of Sant'Arcangelo into the hermitage hidden in the shades of the Appennini and meditated on the highlands of our hikes.

 

In our different journeys, he also taught us about the rituals of the ancients and their meaning, and how the local folklore kept them alive, most of the time forcing the Pagan cult into a Christian significance introducing figures from the church in the modern rites.