Throughout our evolution we have always necessarily confronted ourselves with the surrounding nature that has been experienced and described in so many ways that sometimes, in our present day, it still seems to be multifaceted and multi-souled. Or perhaps it is really such a portentous dimension that it manages to envelop everything and be a nurturing mother who offers unconditional love and inspiration, an ancient entity that deserves maximum respect and protection.
There are places that more than others offer the opportunity to be welcoming like a cradle where time seems suspended, rich in trees, woods, lakes, ridges where the colors of the seasons follow one another in their bursting strength and the coexistence between man, environment and animals is in harmonious balance. From the city we reach the Sant’Uberto estate, an organic farm nestled in the hills of the municipality of Monterenzio. Lucia welcomes us, Physical education teacher, agricultural entrepreneur with training in Outdoor education, a bearer of light through her blue eyes like the clear sky. We smile and chat, letting thoughts and emotions run in random order for a while.
But what is Sant’Uberto? And Lucia reveals it to us through the elements of nature that inspire and generate every related activity and thought. From the seats made with recycled wood logs where you can sit in a circle to talk or do educational activities and in whose center you can place a fireplace to warm you; from the skillfully carved wooden bench overlooking the valley from which, as Leopardi would say, you can contemplate the immensity; from the dirt path that leads to one of the lakes and from whose folds emerge leaves, tracks of wild animals, fossils, all protagonists and witnesses of how much life flows in every corner.
Because experience is knowledge; what we observe, touch, use translates into thought and is imprinted in our inner world as a guide that shows us a path, a vision. Is it possible that in our present day, an era of artificial intelligence and advanced information technology, the most incisive, effective and truthful teaching still comes from nature? According to Lucia, natural education plays an even more key role in our present day in the education of new generations, because it maintains continuity with ancient knowledge but knows how to exist in current reality, with measured rhythms and concreteness of its components.
Let’s start to understand the personality of the Sant’Uberto estate, a gymnasium of life in nature that educates those who venture there. Adventures in nature, indeed. Up here during the summer, girls and boys, can live in contact with the rhythms of the forest. Exploration, knowledge through the reactivation of the senses, the construction of natural elements in a playful context connect with their expressive channels that have sometimes been anesthetized for a long time. Caressing a tree, rolling in the grass, orienting oneself in the forest are practices that strengthen the perception of oneself, of one’s body.
So this magnificent natural environment reveals itself as a gym full of tools in which “adventurers” through a sensorial approach, movement and play, express themselves and are helped according to the principles of psychomotor skills to make their bodies, emotions, cognitive aspects more harmonious and their empathy, communication and relationship skills more effective. Skills that can be transferred to any life context. Furthermore, realizing that the forest and the hill have been there long before us, thousands of years ago, leads to a feeling of respect that translates into care. Care that translates into taking charge because, as Lucia says to the young explorers: “We have occupied the forest, so we must take care of it” and because even if in our imagination we desire a self-managed nature, at Sant’Uberto we come to understand through its example that our presence is not only possible but is also often desirable for the good of the entire ecosystem.
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