Stefano Panzarasa is a friend, a brilliant man who is well described by a verse from a song by Rodari: " on the Moon and on earth / make way for the dreamers" ("Sulla Luna") . And let's hope he doesn't go to the Moon soon, that people like him are needed here. When you talk to us, it seems really nice to you because there aren't so many complaints, there's no room for pessimism. When you talk to us, you feel a little like the smell of a tree.
Geologist, musician, photographer, man full of respect for everything and imagination to give to everyone. Since 2001 he has been working as head of the Environmental Education Service of the local Monti Lucretili Regional Natural Park .
We asked him some questions and he gave us answers that are worth reading with sharp hearing and a ready soul.
What enriches the soul of a child who is brought by parents to a park? Could you mention at least 5 valid and lasting things related to the experience?
In my opinion, when parents bring children into a park they let him experience at the same time the experience of family union and union with other living beings, plants, animals and even our connection with the rest of the non-living world (mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, sea). The soul, in an ecologically profound sense, can recognize that "everything is connected".
The 5 things are:
- the pleasure of being outdoors ;
- the "naturalistic discoveries" together with the parents;
- the teachings that nature can give us;
- reflecting on seasonal cycles and cycles in general ;
- our connection with nature, the non-human and non-living world .
You have titled the book "Talking with trees" . Do you talk to us? Do you hug them?
Of course! Otherwise I wouldn't have had the courage to give my book such a demanding title ...
Talking with trees is the name of a laboratory that I carry out with the Environmental Education Service of the Monti Lucretili Regional Natural Park. The laboratory is for the park's schools but also for adults and is created starting from a Tai-chi technique.
At the Licensed Garden of the Five Senses, home of the park's EA Service, there is an old pear tree that looks like a woman with two large branches reaching towards the sky. For me it is the "Albera" a kind of Garden Goddess, I also made her a terracotta necklace and I often go to her, talk to her and hug her. She is a great friend to me, a source of wisdom and inspiration.
In your book you dedicate beautiful pages to Gianni Rodari. In particular, refer to the story of the gentleman with an unripe, green ear, with which he could understand what babies and children had to say to the world, their aspirations, their dreams. What would you recommend to adults to return to having a green, unripe ear? Practical advice.
Gianni Rodari (who I love very much) says it well in the text of the rhyme "I listen to what the birds say, the clouds that pass, the stones, the streams. I also understand children when they say things that seem mysterious to a mature ear ... "
So we need to reflect on how to go back to listening to nature and its truths, sometimes the same as children can tell us. Returning to the first question, a practical advice can be just to go to the protected areas with children, listen and hope that something happens.
You see yourself getting on the guitar and giving us smiles. What is the secret to not give up, do not lose enthusiasm?
The secret is very simple, it is the awareness and the hope that " spring cannot be stopped " . Humans, the planet, we have all gone through difficult moments, even worse than today, but life has always run its course and everything has flourished.
In my songs that are punk or folk ballads there is always ecological awareness and hope .
How can the Lucretili Mountains Regional Nature Park be supported?
Coming to see us especially now that the whole network of paths has been put back in place, participating in the events by visiting the site. Then there are the bed & breakfasts and holiday farms of people who love the park. Then also proposing activities to do together.
We have our own site dedicated to the Parco dei Monti Lucretili.
What is the Garden of the Five Senses?
It is a beautiful place in the mountains near the Licensing country. It is an Environmental Education Center where the Service I manage is located. There is the Park Visitor Center, the pools with medicinal herbs, the possibility, especially for school groups, to experience environmental education with all the senses and ecological games.
And then there is the forest, the Maricella stream, the path that goes into the heart of the protected area and not far away the lookout point of the cliff where the only pair of golden eagle that lives in the park nests. In short, in short, the Garden of the Five Senses is a truly magical place!
Environmental education arrives in schools
Your book contains a large amount of ideas related to ecolaboratories, ecological training seminars, environmental education programs. If a young person today has an idea and wants to develop it, who should he turn to?
Good question. I have a dear friend in the Park who owns a holiday home in the park, in Orvinio. He sometimes manages to get funding for cultural-naturalistic activities by joining regional or European tenders aimed at protected areas. We of the park collaborate with him but also with anyone who shows us activities compatible with the protected nature.
When did you understand - if you understood it at a specific moment - that you wanted to work with children?
There was no precise moment and when I was young I hadn't really taken it into consideration. But then my work inside the Rome Department of the Environment and then from 2001 to the Monti Lucretili Park has often brought me into contact with schools and so I discovered a world I didn't know (or I had forgotten) made of very good teachers and children with their joy of living.
So over time I became fond of all of them and I started pouring my ecopacifist activities into schools with nature, music and poetry, nutrition, let's say the activities that are very dear to me. The result was exciting for me, in the end I also changed my professional profile, from a naturalist to an educator .
You are a geologist. In your opinion does the human soul have its telluric movements that music and laughter also bring harmony?
Yes, that's right, whether it's rock music or sweet ballads (I love and sing both and even laugh, I'm a Capricorn-Ascendant Gemini) music and laughter help a lot, relax, energize, resonate with us in our deep and make us feel in harmony with ourselves and the world around us.
In the video, a tribute to Gianni Rodari with the background music of the poems by Gianni Rodari, Sulla luna and La torta in cielo, sung by Stefano Panzarasa (arrangements by William Urbinati), tells the story of a month spent in Capracotta (IS) in Molise for the animation program Vivere con Cura conceived by Antonio D'Andrea
