canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Torrente Coserie

The descent of the main branch of Coserie creek is a long journey through the "relative wildness" of the Northern Sila. From the distant wooded ridge with a view that ranges from the sea to the forests of Sila, you go down through the waterfalls and the pools of a harsh, long valley surrounded by woods and landslides, down to that spectacular river of stones and oleanders that Calabrians call the fiumara.

I remember ...

What I call "relative wildness" is an environment that has remained wild in spite of roads, forest cuts, fires, and grazing livestock. This is due to the harsh nature of these indomitable mountains, which makes it long and complex to move even for short distances. It is due to the vital force of the rocks, which move down erasing the roads and paths, and of plants, which thrive despite everything. The abandonment of the countryside and emigration play their part, and so today you find yourself climbing on a broken track that was once a road, and when you stop you hear only the sound of the wind to which it will add the water that jumps between the boulders. And it seems to you that a little of that quiet wildness comes into your body and mind every breath you take.

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