Škocjan / San Canziano

Ποσειδώνιος δέ φησι ποταμον τον τίμαυον εκ των ορων φερόμενον καταπίπaniickets και τριακοντα σταδίους επι τη θαλαττη την εκβολην ποιεισθαι. 

Posidonius tradit — flumen Timevus e montibus dilatum voragine terrae adsorbevi sub qua, ubi per CXXX stadia decurrente, eum in mare effluere.

Posidonius reports that the river Timavo, swollen as it descended from the mountains, was absorbed by the abyss of the earth under which, running for 130 stadia, it flowed into the sea.

So writes Strabo, reporting the words of the great Syrian geographer Posidonius of Apamea. In fact, after a superficial journey of about forty km which starts near Mount Snežnik, the Reka/Timavo river plummets into a complex of underground tunnels beneath the town of Škocjan. The river’s water enters a cavity more than 6 km long in total and passes through some very deep collapse sinkholes: the Mala dolina, 120 meters deep, and the Velika dolina,165 m deep. From here the river, after having traveled through a gigantic gorge with around twenty waterfalls, disappears into a siphon, reappearing on the surface only after about forty km, near Štivan/San Giovanni di Duino, very close to the Adriatic Sea.

At the moment I don't know whether to be more fascinated by the wonders of nature or by the curiosity of man, who already two thousand years ago recorded all these geographical traits (and how? Who arrived in Apamea to tell Posidonio about the Timavo, the caves, the Karst?). Perhaps, however, there is no need to choose because in these same caves, among these same rocks welcoming a foaming river, people of the late Bronze Age of whom we know little or nothing of, used to throw some of their most precious possessions, their weapons, their ornaments, their ceremonial utensils, in a rite that saw the stripping of man of his objects for some greater good. A good on which the scientific community hasn’t found a common explanation, and which I too, right off the bat, don’t know how to explain. Yet continuing to walk from the caves up to the village of Škocjan, up to the little church of the saints martyrs with the free-standing bell tower and the soft meadow all around, and then sitting on the sheer walls that once protected from the Turks and now open up to the snow-covered Snežnik in the distance while the swallows have already arrived, it seems to me that it’s not even necessary to explain, because it is and, and, and, and, and, and... and that's it.