I was twelve years old when I discovered the scent of juniper. My father, like so many families at the time, wanted to buy a house in Sardinia, and for almost fifty years since then, I have not stopped marveling at this intense and special smell that characterizes the island. Fifty years full of wonders, discoveries, emotions and experiences that the island has given me. Yet, I knew I still did not know it completely. When I read, a year ago, about a path that had been opened, from Olbia to Cagliari, something knocked at my door, as it happened with the Way of St. James (some say it is the Apostle who calls you to leave for his tomb). It also happened to me for the Way of Bonaria. I discovered a land that I only perceived before, despite my 50 years of frequenting it; it was like having rejoiced in the scent of myrtle and not yet having tasted its fruit. Most of all, I was surprised by the people I met. They belong to this ancient and sweet land through a special symbiosis that binds them to it. The surprise is not only the deep hospitality they feel toward the wayfarer; it binds all those who live where Nature, still, manages to scan its rhythms, where the city is far away and sharing is still necessity, not simple economic calculation. I had already experienced it on other paths, those less traveled: in Lazio, in Umbria, in Aragon and in my mountains. The surprise, which turns into wonder, is the constant and discreet presence, the desire to share and share our adventure, our joys and our sufferings. Of all this I have taken photographs that are not stored in my smartphone; they are frames, moments, that fix smiles and artichokes in oil, an offered beer and a ride in the car because we had taken a wrong turn, the loquats brought to the top of the most difficult climb and the comfort of a park ranger at the top of the Grighine, the wake up too early for a hospitalist and a family dinner, the comfort in a cafe after a violent thunderstorm and the words of a parish priest, the wait for messages from a “mysterious” guardian angel and the boiled sheep offered at a festival, a washing machine made for us, the messages sent days after our passage to ask “how are you?” and the pleasure of conversing together about the destinies of an area. These frames I put inside my backpack, which did not get heavier for them; on the contrary, it became lighter. And they arrived with me in front of Our Lady of Bonaria. Sardinia is beautiful, an ancient land, you discover it on top of Gonare, in Barumini and Fordongianus, in the woods of Barbagia, looking at the Giara but also in the sunny expanses of Trexenta and Campidano. It changes surprisingly, between north and south; it is never the same: the granite of Gallura gives way to the basalt of Barbagia and then the green of the central plains that turn into the wheat fields of Campidano. Yet it maintains a common character: that of the ancient and wise land that reverberates on its inhabitants, who know how to wait and listen. As of today, the berries of my myrtle, the one that has taken root in my heart and that I have finally tasted, all have names: their names are Salvatore, Immaculata, Lia, Giuseppina, Chiara, Mariangela and the guys from the bar in Lula and Mogorella, Don Fabio, Giovanni, Alessandra, Paola, Laura and Tore, Salfranco, Giovanna, Fiorella and Ottavio, Anna, Don Gianmarco and Eleonora. Salude and Trigu Sardinia
Patrizio Abrate – Turin
