It’s a funny thing; I’ve been thinking about the Cammino Materano for months now, if not years, and yet I’ve nearly completed my walk on it now, at least for the time being. There’s one firm exception to that statement; I’ll detour onto a variant of the Via Ellenica in order to visit Alberobello when I’m heading north on the Via Francigena Sud. And there’s a conceptual exception as well, in the sense that my walk southward over the coming days is inspired by what will eventually become the Via Jonica, another part of the Materano’s spiderweb network of trails branching forth from Matera. And yet, it’s mostly all over, in just four days.
What has struck me the most about the Materano is the heart behind it. That’s not just because of Federico and Maria’s kindness in Castellaneta, though such a welcome has staying power. It’s the little touches–the painted messages exhorting pilgrims forward along the trail, mixed in among the waymarks. It’s the recognition that this is one giant community passion project, organized by volunteers within only the last decade, and formally launched in January 2018. It’s the ethos behind the Cammino.
As the story goes, one of the founders was walking the Camino de Santiago, en route to Roncesvalles, when another pilgrim asked why they couldn’t just walk in Southern Italy. Setting aside a whole bunch of obvious, legitimate answers, this still planted a bug in the mind of that pilgrim, who soon recruited his fellow walking and pilgrimage friends, who brought expertise from the realms of archaeology, history, and ecology, and then proceeded to map out the first branch of the Materano. There are pilgrimage routes in Italy that lean on a Roman road to provide legitimacy, or a saint’s life, or even an archbishop’s journal, but the Materano wove together lesser Roman tracks, medieval roads, sheep paths, and whatever else is on hand in order to weave together this region into a cohesive itinerary.
If you look at the gps tracks for any of these daily stages, you’ll immediately recognize that there is nothing efficient about the Materano. Sometimes, that’s by necessity. As I depart Castellaneta on a cool, overcast morning, I have no choice but to proceed southward, as a yawning chasm halts any thought of westward momentum. Instead, I march along the canyon’s ridge until a converted aqueduct finally offers passage, and from there a purpose-built walking path leads directly to Palagianello. I’ve only been walking for an hour; there’s a bridge offering direct access over a smaller canyon into the town. And yet, the Materano denies me such immediate gratification, calling for a left turn that follows the canyon back to the north, before finally descending steep steps, hacked directly into the stone walls who knows how many years ago, and then promptly turning back towards town. As I climb into the center, I pass a Chiesa Rupestre–a cave church with a modern façade imposed in recent years–and loop past another newish church before finally arriving back at where I practically was thirty minutes prior.
The Materano, by design, doesn’t exist to get you anywhere fast. Just the opposite. As the founders explain on their site, translated courtesy of Google, the route aspires to effect “the recovery of a more authentic dimension, more intimate and close to our being, through the reappropriation of one’s own time, one’s own body and one’s own senses: setting out means restoring balance between spirit and body, harmonizing with nature and everything that surrounds us; it means developing a new concept of one’s own existence.”
I pop into a cafe and grab a macchiato, pleased to have the opportunity so early in the walk, and perhaps even more so given that last bit of added exertion. I think back to where I started, just a few days ago, and the central importance of Matera to this route; it’s right there in the name, after all. Again, the Cammino Materano’s website is instructive in speaking to the importance of this city, spotlighting a quote from Carlo Levi’s book, Christ Stopped at Eboli, from his visit to the city. Keep in mind that this was written in 1945.
“Inside those black holes with earthen walls I saw the beds, the miserable furnishings, the rags spread out. On the floor were stretched out the dogs, the sheep, the goats, the pigs. Each family usually has only one of those caves for a home and they all sleep together, men, women, children, animals. There were an infinite number of children, naked or covered in rags. I saw children sitting on the doorsteps of the houses, in the dirt, in the burning sun, with their eyes half-closed and their eyelids red and swollen. It was trachoma. I knew it was down here: but seeing it like this in the filth and misery is another thing. And the flies landed on his eyes and they didn’t seem to notice them with their little faces wrinkled like old men and skeletal from hunger: their hair full of lice and scabs. The thin women with their malnourished and dirty infants attached to their withered breasts made it seem like we were in the middle of a city struck by the plague.” In a country of affluence, it’s easy to exist with a sense of poverty that has seen its edges worn down, a relativistic vision of only one older car, a dodgy apartment, but still equipped with cable television and a smartphone. This was poverty in its blunt, unforgiving, and unyielding form.
For the route’s creators, Matera is a symbol of hope for the south, for the regions of Basilicata and Puglia, speaking to the possibility of rebirth and redemption. The Cammino Materano aspires to be a force for social good, drawing travelers to non-touristed areas, supporting a form of growth that is sustainable and environmentally responsible. In such a short time, they have already cultivated something remarkable, drawing in walkers and pilgrims from around the world to visit these less known places like Ginosa and Castellaneta.
Not to mention, of course, the Chiese Rupestri. If timing wasn’t on my side when I arrived in Palagianello, it couldn’t touch me over this next section, where two cave churches were accessible at any hour. The first, San Nicola, required a modest detour, followed by a descent into a small gully–a shocking reminder that these small, cut gorges are lurking unsuspected all through an otherwise flat landscape. Barred gates blocked access to the interior, but the frescoes inside were wonderfully preserved, including a Christ in Majesty behind the altar, deep within. Sant’Angelo, meanwhile, was directly on route, and what it lacked in preserved paintings was offset by complete access, allowing a visitor to wander through the caves, getting a feel for the layout of the church hacked out from within. In a land with limited timber, where building up might prove more challenging, the people here built inward and through, carving deeper into the agreeable, soft rock, finding opportunities for worship where they were. Sometimes, you just have to work with what you have.
I climb to Mottola, my second rest stop of the day, and a golden opportunity to snag a pastry from one of a dozen different bakers. As is true with most of these towns along the Materano, the charms of Mottola aren’t immediately accessible; it’s a newer space, largely composed of cinder blocks and cement. Beneath the surface, though, are the original Greek walls, speaking to how long the history of this place is, and how many centuries different owners have been passing through, asserting control and making their mark on the land.
More kilometers remain ahead of me at this point than what I’ve already completed, but it’s easy, comfortable walking and the clouds have maintained their control over the skies. For a time, I weave along footpaths through scrubby pine trees, in what proves to be a popular dump site, with refuse lining the walkway for an extended stretch. Eventually, though, I emerge into an expansive stretch of giant olive trees, far taller than any I’ve previously encountered. In the midst of this sprawling grid of marvelous oil faucets, a lone man with a ladder moves from one tree to the next, with a pair of clippers, as though he were crafting a bonsai on the greatest scale imaginable. It’s not quite finding a needle in a haystack, but the patience and care required to perform this task, day after day, boggles the mind.
As I finally reach Massafra, I’m struck by the raggedy nature of the place. A stately old religious complex marks my entrance, and the richness of its facade is offset by the broken front door, the emptied interior, and the overgrown–and trash-riddled–vacant lot in front of it. The next street that I follow is missing manhole covers; it’s a direct drop to the sewers. I climb past the castle towards Piazza Garibaldi and pass through an extended stretch of construction work–an encouraging sign of what’s to come, for sure, but one more mark of mess and disorder to cap off this section. In the hours that follow, those initial impressions are then joined by appreciation for the bartender who is all too pleased to supply me with the town’s Cammino Materano stamp, and the loveliness of the buildings looming above that road construction–which I hadn’t bothered to lift my head up to notice on my initial passage–and the jaw dropping view of the castle from the town bridge, towering over the mouth of the canyon.
I spend the night reading about olive tree cultivation, instead of writing this piece, as I should have. Why all that assiduous pruning? Some answers are intuitive enough; for example, one should cut dried-out or diseased branches. The removal of older branches also facilitates the growth of newer ones, which often offer increased productivity. The tactical thinning out of a tree improves airflow between and sunlight access to branches throughout the tree, which is also good for its health. Years of experimentation have revealed that the “polyconic vase” shape works best, with three-to-four main branches growing upward at 30-45 degree angles. The trees around here seem rounder, though, and less concerned with that particular standard. Regardless, I’m reminded once again of a quote I return to repeatedly, from the historian Robert Conquest: “Cutting the taproot is in one sense a lesser operation than lopping off a number of dead branches. To pursue the metaphor further, it is much easier to kill a tree, and requires considerably less knowledge of dendrology, than to prune it effectively.” Perhaps we could all stand for a little more careful pruning right now.
Even more striking to me is what I read about the harvesting process. In Puglia, this mostly takes place in the fall, between September and November, though it can extend into January. The traditional approach, dating to the Romans and still employed in some parts of the region, is brucatura, or manual–each olive picked by hand, carefully selected. This, the experts claim, results in the purest and best olive oil. One famous olive tree in the region, north of Bari, produces 200kg of olives annually. Imagine picking each of those, one at a time! More common these days is scuotitura, a mechanized process that involves a light shaking of the tree, putting minimal strain on it, but speeding things up a bit. In Southern Puglia, there are farmers who, models of patience that they are, wait for the olives to fall before collecting them.
To make one liter of olive oil, one needs eight kilograms of olives (nearly 18 pounds), which works out to around 2000-4000 olives.
How is your mind rewired, your very perception of the world altered, when your life’s work is organized around such deliberate, repetitive, and detail-oriented work? Maybe it’s not that different from the effect of walking long distances, I consider, as I set forth from Massafra, finding already a bright blue sky overhead. With a short stage in front of me, just 18.5km to Crispiano, I stroll leisurely through the length of the town, before emerging back into green hills slashed with ribbons of pine. Even with a promised early entry into my accommodation at 13:00, I still have hours to kill, so I slip off trail to visit an old fortified farmhouse, long abandoned at this point. I climb to the roof and hop from one building to the next, then descend and explore the interiors. A bale of hay sits incongruously within what I suspect was the dining hall; a bucket and rope are tucked away in a nook, just waiting for a well. Otherwise, the space is vacant, gathering dust and graffiti in equal measure.
No matter how much I dawdle, though, Crispiano looms ever larger, until I finally arrive, closing off this short, opening stage of the walk. My host, Marcello, arrives early, and shows me around the Masseria Urbana, a marvelous space–complete with washing machine, foosball table, hammock, and sunroom–that I will once again have all to myself. He adds the last stamp–for now–to my credential.
The Cammino Materano is only seven years old, but through caring and careful management, it has already taken shape. It’s ready for more pilgrims.
