Diaterna Torrent
A natural paradise in Mugello (Tuscany)
The Diaterna Torrent is a valuable watercourse in the province of Florence, which after having carved out its valley in Tuscany ends up flowing into the Santerno river, which descends towards Imola, this torrent, although flowing entirely in the territory of Tuscany jurisdiction, morphologically part of the Romagna Apennines to all intents and purposes, but these are purely speculative geographical questions, which have nothing to do with Nature and the landscape, and honestly are of little interest to us.
The stream, just over eight kilometers long, is made up of three branches, hence the name Diaterna, which derives from Dea Terna, a Goddess of particular beauty, three arms in fact, because every place where such beauty reigns cannot to have originated if not from a Goddess. Here I have explored and photographed only a stretch of the main course (Diaterna di Caburaccia, which originates from Colle di Canda), but it is my desire as soon as I can to explore the other two branches of this course, the Diaterna Valica which originates near the Raticosa pass, and the Diaterna di Castelvecchio, which arises from the Sasso di San Zanobì (a solitary ophiolitic rock formation at the base of Mount La Fine).
The river is very beautiful, lots of water even in the height of summer, fresh and clean, spectacular amphitheaters of rocky layers, uncontaminated nature and a wild environment, you can walk for hours without encountering traces of civilisation, or almost, at a certain point in fact you encounter a bridge over which the high-speed railway passes! Hidden behind the rocky bends of the river, small and rudimentary stone shelters were built by bathers, with roofs made of sticks and fluttering curtains at the entrance, and complete with artisanal and inviting barbecues: these artefacts, inserted into the environment wild of this small valley, give the impression of having suddenly made us take a leap back in time, it seems to suddenly find ourselves lost in some fold of time, in some unspecified primitive village.
One thing I learned about fish, trying to photograph them in this river: their confidence with humans is inversely proportional to their age, the smaller the fish, the more curious they are and they venture towards the new intruder, even nibbling my hands. who held the camera tightly, the bigger the fish, the more wary they are, up to the larger ones who are also curious, but look at you suspiciously from afar, with disdain, keeping well away!
It is a very beautiful place, which deserves a visit, indeed it deserves to be experienced to the full, and it certainly deserves to return. It can be easily reached from Firenzuola in Tuscany or from Castel del Rio in Romagna: along the state road that runs alongside the Santerno, between the towns of Coniale and San Pellegrino there is the locality of Scheggianico, near which you have to take via Coniale Cerreta, after a few dozen meters you will find some small clearings where you can park, near which a path starts which in a few steep minutes of descent leads to the river
And this is broadly the geography of the place, let's now move on to human resources: I wanted to explore this interesting stream for its waters and its spectacular rocky amphitheatres, but also because this place is known for being frequented by naturists, that is, people who they love a direct and unfiltered relationship with nature, in short, they don't wear a swimsuit, regardless of beach fashions and the latest trends.
It is certainly a way to be even more spiritually in contact with the forces of nature, abandoning for a while the constricting roles of science, masks and hypocrisies. In this way, contact with nature becomes all-encompassing, you merge, you feel part of the forest, the rock, the waters. The boundary between interiority and exteriority becomes more labile and permeable, we elevate ourselves to a higher form of sensitivity and vibration, but we must be willing to put aside our misleading illusions of perfectionism, lay down the defensive weapons behind which we entrench ourselves on a daily basis, and which isolate us from pure perception and from our purest essence, and we must abandon the warlike exercise of judgment, with which we always willingly play, hidden behind our armour, from where we look at the world only from small and narrow slits. Simply put, we just have to be ourselves, that's all... perhaps the most difficult thing to put into practice. However, it is very likely that if we are negative people with clothes, we will also be negative without them!
As far as I'm concerned, my intimate relationship with nature is a very personal thing, which I often practice in solitude, and I don't necessarily need places for social sharing, for me every forest, every rock, every river is a temple, a sacred place, an extension of my deepest feelings. By sacred place I mean a place that is halfway between a physical place and an "inner place" where one perceives the suggestion and perception of being part of an energy that transcends us, something much bigger than us, but which we are part of, which we carry within us, at a certain point even the boundaries of inside and outside lose their meaning. Sacred is a symbolic place not profaned by man's materialism. Sacred is something that by definition belongs to a God or a Divinity, it is not ours therefore, even if we are granted access to it, it is not human, it is not subjected to the laws of men and their personal interests. Sacred is that territory of life and of Nature and of ourselves that we cannot understand with reason.
A bit like Beauty, try to describe what beauty is: you can write rivers of words, and rivers of words have been written, but you will always be far from its inexpressible essence! It is always something elusive, something that perhaps does not exist except in the territory that is halfway between the boundaries of the real and the unreal, something that does not exist in itself without the intervention of our feelings, of our soul, perhaps in the end it is our own soul! Photography can be a concrete example of this: often a photograph makes a given place, or a given person, who perhaps isn't so beautiful in person much more beautiful than reality, vice versa, just as often a sublime or grandiose beauty fails to be adequately captured from a simple photograph, there is always something that is added, created, or something that escapes, that is missing, that elusive essence that we call beauty, or sacredness. Perhaps the beauty and the sense of the sacred are nothing other than our own soul, which is reflected as a sky is reflected on a lake, and is recognisable!
Returning to the river, this place is very quiet and free, and if you go there in the summer you have to take into account, whether you are with a swimsuit or without, that you will certainly meet completely naked people, men and women, so know how to be respectful of ideas and of other people's lifestyles, because this is the basis of a free society, and also because no one can consider themselves the holder of the absolute truth. On the other hand, in the past, even in the rivers that cross our cities, not very far from our days, when customs had not yet been invented, or were only the prerogative of a rich bourgeoisie, on hot summer days people went to cooling off in the river, and then it was normal to take baths and enjoy the coolness of the groves, in total nudity, without any scandal or inappropriate moralism. The naked body was abhorred only by the aristocracy and the rich bourgeoisie, perhaps with the exception of some artistic concessions, as the nude is essentially too democratic, a bit like death !
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