foto di Doriano Brunel, per gentile concessione

waterweare

We are made of water. So it is rather natural that we like it. Seeing a stream that seems to positively strain to run and laugh as it descends through the woods to reach the valley below puts anyone in a good mood. To lie on the banks of a pond in the mountains for an hour is more relaxing than a day at a health spa. Filling one's hands and drinking from a spring that gushes forth from the ground in the forest makes peace with the world.

In the Fassa Valley, there are many springs, those that are clear and those that bring with them the color of the earth that they cross, like the ferruginous waters that dye even the whitest rocks a brick hue.

There are waters with therapeutic properties. At Pozza, a spring has been known for centuries with sulphurous water that can cure a variety of skin ail- ments and some illnesses of the respiratory system. And then there are miraculous springs. At Vigo, near an ancient place of worship, there is the San Vito Spring of crystalline water. Many legends speak of it. This water and this place take us back to times in which the people of the Fassa Valley asked pagan de- ities for protection and prosperity. In some legends, a place is mentioned where an eternal fire burned in honor of these deities. At the same place, the first Christian preachers who had reached the valley were supposedly killed.

Over time, the pagan deities have given way to Christian saints, and at the place of worship, the first church in the Fassa Valley was built in honor of Santa Giuliana, patron saint of the valley. One of the many saints who, along with the Madonna right around the beginning of the eleventh century, would definitively replace the preceding deities - for the Ladins and the peoples of the Alps, the goddess Diana-Rezia or in any case a Great Mother - becoming the new protec- tor of the people, always in the delicate equilibrium between menacing catastrophic events and resolving divine interventions.

The places of worship that are located close to springs often accommodate deities of fertility. In addition to having therapeutic and purifying powers, water is an element that leads us back to the beginning of everything. And precisely herein, where it is closely connected with the divine that provides its origin, lies its power. And it is here, where the water issues forth and is the most pure, that the very divinity makes it- self evident and gives over its goodness at that place. The water of San Vito is crystalline and pure. Its provident and providing work has continued for cen- turies, and perhaps for millennia, for the people of the Fassa Valley.

Next to the little spring, which has been channeled into an anonymous pipe, a cup has been hung up. This small vessel is both an invitation and an appeal. The silent sharing of a benevolent power available to all those who pass. There are those who ascend through the woods specifically to drink the water be- cause they simply believe in the "miraculous", an act of faith or a preventive remedy against what nega- tive may ultimately occur. And there are those, on the other hand, who drink it to cure illnesses that are as yet unknown or those for which traditional medicine can do little.

In any case, it is a gesture of faith. Millennia have passed, but both then and now, drinking from the source has a deep, greatly symbolic meaning, one of protection, healing, and salvation. From generation to generation, both the tradition and the faith contained within it have been handed down. Because the power of the water never changes. It can be repeated infinitely, without end, because wa- ter generates and regenerates every organism com- posed of water. And we, after all, are made of water.