The slopes are very steep and are always covered in mist and the humidity runs down the earth like a permanent sap. When I was there I found a place where I stayed for some time because I realized that it was necessary to immerse the senses in that dense and intricate green blanket that over the centuries had developed in a way we had never seen in any other place. After a while we started to distinguish plants from others and to realize that underneath that green layer there was a black earth that was pierced here and there by sharp cliffs that unexpectedly plunged into the void and then we discovered the precipices that were beyond the curtain. green and we felt dizzy looking at the void right there at our feet.
Light is a fundamental aspect because it is from it that our mental map is built, the combination of what the eyes see with the matter of thought is the cornerstone of knowledge that penetrates these layers of soil and allows us to feel life from the subterranean world, everything that is hidden but that somehow permeates our senses. Gradually we became aware of the different dimensions that were there and that at first contact had gone unnoticed and even the thermal variation and the sound reverberation of each of the places we were exploring became something with the greatest importance due to its subtlety. , a context that we could call the "Personality of the Forest". The transition of these qualities from one place to another never happened abruptly, it happened subtly, a zone of "hand in hand" that in a continuous chain formulated an extraordinary balance between all those parts. The trees of a certain species developed differently in these different areas and we realized that they were all connected to each other and the most powerful ones pulled the most simple and fragile and all that seemed to us to be an immense network of connections in which the experience of each one it added to a total experience that was like the vitality of a living being that spilled over the earth for an incalculable extent.
In a certain place we found a man living in a hut, a kind of hermit, he looked like one of us, dressed like us and spoke calmly with a strong accent and we deduced that many years had passed since he had moved there. He did not present himself as a careless person or even careless with his appearance, who felt intimate with our presence or who had some kind of complex in showing himself in the full light of the clearing where he lived, on the contrary, he seemed to us to be very upright someone who took care of himself, it was evident that he was not a refugee or an outcast but someone who had voluntarily exiled himself there to study him and perhaps even to study himself, it was he who explained to us many ideas about the forest , which without this precious help would still be unknown to us today. If we already suspected that there was continuity in that hierarchy of plants, it was he who showed us with great patience that the great trees that raised their crowns to great heights and formed the primary canopy of the forest, were actually the pillars of that cathedral made of green and exercised a judicious distribution of resources that was the guarantee that the balance was maintained in function of all the living beings of the forest, from the great barbuzanos and laurels to the small low grasses that covered the soil, insects, birds and all animals who lived there.
Near our small wooden house, there was a small black water lagoon where. At a certain time of day, the sun penetrated through an opening in the canopy and then the rays of light gave a green and blue tint to these waters and made the wet surfaces of stones and plants sparkle. It was in this place that our neighbor, the hermit meditated, he did it very early before dawn, sitting cross-legged on a rock a little away from our hut and it was when we went outside to start our day that he he considered his practice to be over and that generally coincided with the explosion of light that at that time illuminated the place. At some point the strongest light fell on him and then his figure took on a charming aura under the spotlight and he looked like an icon that nature had highlighted as a symbol of that place. A little later, the sun hit the horinzon and the light fell again, keeping the pond in darkness for the rest of the day.
There was music in the forest. It was strange to hear songs there because the sound was transported from one place to another through the acoustic qualities of the mountain, it was certainly the voice of the forest dweller, who probably was sitting on a promontory, dedicated to reciting his poems and his voice which was very grave echoed down the steep hillsides in overlapping echoes of different intensities and it seemed almost as if the mountain was breathing and in doing so, it was telling its secrets. The wind also blew in the treetops and made a noise. It was a soft and enchanting sound that became very persistent when we happened to be approaching a precipice, at those times it was possible to hear it reaching us, first as a soft stubble among the foliage below and then enter in force by the streaks of rock with its flared hisses. One day we sat on a rock for a long time listening to a curious combination of sounds that resulted from the echoes of our neighbor's voice singing out of sight in another stronghold of the mountain, and the wind that blew strong that day from the north. The sound of the human voice was almost indistinct in the set of sounds that reached us, but it was precisely this dematerialization that best combined with the mountain organ that the wind blew.
The day of departure came and it was with a certain sadness that we left behind that world that survived from many ages. We were proud to have been in one of the few places in Europe where it is still possible to find splendid specimens of ancient trees around which our ancestors built their relationship with the cosmos and which have survived in a habitat that has been kept innocuous and that gives us an idea of what primitive forests were like. A memory that inspired us and that we want to keep forever.
Of the great ancestral forests there is little left in Europe, after centuries of depredation the contemporary landscape has little to do with these splendid millenary trees around which our ancestors built their connection with the cosmos. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, on the high slopes of the island of Madeira, I found the laurissilva forest. A habitat dating back to about 1.8 million years and which represents what would be those great old forests that once covered the Mediterranean basin. In our age only survived small áreas in the islands of Macaronesia.
During the years following this visit, often these images of ancient trees tucked into an ancient soil have popped into my mind and naturally overflow into other landscapes. This contamination is like a transversal river that feeds with these sedimentos experiences of other places, we can call this process an archeology of memory.