Montemaggiore / Brezje

Mount Tenzeclavo, Mount Ioànaz, Mount Topli Uorch, Mount Merzli Uorch, Rio Tasajauar, Rio Tasabazaretan, Casera Sredgnobardo, Casera Totisouze, and again: Tanacertegna, Orenavragnerop, Uonenastiemane, Unenabarde, Uonalopate, Unarobu, Tu Robu, Rohateza, Ostra Scala, Sliamanza ...where did I end up?

In some cases I can vaguely recognize forced Italianizations of Slovenian words, but in others, in the majority, I am completely lost, I understand nothing. “It's ponassi” Italo explains to me, “from the words po našem, which in Slovenian mean our way.” Italo is a gentleman from Treviso who chose to come live here more than thirty years ago. He continues, “unfortunately, after the earthquake the town emptied out and today, apart from a few crazy people, who would want to come and live up here, isolated from everything and everyone? And so, without people, without a community, the village dies. And with it, ponassi dies as well.”

I think of the po našem that still resists in the high mountains, in the abandoned pastures taken over by the tall grass, among the fallen stones of the ruined dairy farms. I think of the Slovenian people who spoke these extraordinary names, who were they? How did they live? What relationship did they have with these slopes, these cliffs, these oak and lime woods, these waters that made everything washed out and slippery?

And so I think of the Natisone river, which in Slovenian is female and is called Nadiža. I think of the Natisone which before being the Natisone was called Natissa and before that no one knows. Of the Natisone which in ancient times followed another path, a path which gave the opportunity to found Aquileia, a river port looking towards the Adriatic Sea, to the snow-capped mountains of Lebanon, to the lush delta of the Nile. 

“I did them all, I did: I did Libya, I did Egypt, I did Ethiopia. We built dams, put down bridles, built embankments. I was away for months and months in Addis Ababa and then I came back here for a few weeks, here in the Sredgnobardo dairy farm, can you imagine?” Franco Sturma, born in 1949, a native from here, has just arrived to greet his friend Italo. “Ethiopia is beautiful: the Semien mountains overlooking the Tacazzè, the tree heathers towering over suspended overhangs of black washed rocks, the kudus with spiral horns and beards all along their necks, the gelada baboons that the closer you get to them, the more you understand how alike we are... but it's beautiful here too, don't you think?”