INSPIRATION

After the morning visit to the Tonara torronificio I throw myself downhill towards Tiana. It is a wonderful day, the air is sparkling, and the bike whizzes through the green woods.

Just before arriving in the village, on the left a very steep descent leads to sa Cracchera de tziu Bellu, a water mill, the place where the wool was crowded thanks to the wooden machinery activated by the water mills.

There is a group of schoolchildren from Olzai, the children recognise me (‘you slept at Aunt Peppina’s in Olzai!’) And a woman in traditional costume illustrates the whole process of wool treatment.

I go up a steep climb and after a bit I arrive in the village. The Mayor Francesco awaits me. In the village they are all very busy for the Autumn in Barbagia feast, the event that will start tomorrow until Sunday. There are only a little more than three hundred inhabitants, in this village on the side of a wonderful valley, at the confluence of the two rivers Torrei and Tino.

I see with pleasure a rack of bicycles parked out of the Town Hall and Francesco explains that there are only few municipalities in Sardinia that have public bicycles, and Tiana is one of them.

85% of the municipal territory is covered with woods. I visit a small part in the afternoon, arriving after a short climb to the domus de janas di Mancosu perched on the side of the mountain. On the road I bump into some woodcutters and a shepherd with the flock (I pay attention to the sounds of the bells!).

I spend the evening resting in the b&b (finally) and catching up with some work on the musical fragments and the blog.

 

MUSICAL FRAGMENTS

Inspired by the hypnotic movement of the wooden blades of the mill. Written in the b&b Meddie.

SARDINIAN SHORT STORIES

Lorenzo is retired but his work in the countryside never ceases. He brings me to see his terrains in the woods. ‘See, here I try to keep the road clean by cutting trees and plants, I get a lot of wood for the winter’. Walking, he finds a plastic bottle, he picks it up and tells me ‘ah these schoolchildren visiting the domus de janas!’. He tells me about the problem of fires, that although there had not been any for years, a big one had recently caused damage, ‘the fires are almost always malicious, the problem of a person causes damage to the whole population’.

Then he explains how he makes honey, and how the bees are at risk of extinction because of the herbicides used to clean the streets ‘see, if the bees die we too will die, because there will no longer be pollinators, and without vegetation and vegetables we can not survive.’ And he tells me about the bees-drones that the Japanese are developing and how worrying this all is.

He talks to me about many other things, politics, history, cooking, technology, and when I come back to sort out the thoughts, I realize how even in a small village at the confluence of two streams you can get an idea of ​​how the things in the world work, and worry about the future of humanity.