Sit at this mountain table, do you want to taste the barley soup for Mario Rigoni Stern with me? There is a special guest.

In 2021, the centenary of the birth of Mario Rigoni Stern, a great storyteller from Asiago, was celebrated.

Yes, he indeed wanted to be called a storyteller, not a novelist or writer, justifying it: “a storyteller is one who tells what he has experienced or known through others’ experiences, becoming a spokesperson for a collective memory”.

Mario Rigoni Stern considered himself “a dwarf willow in the forest of literature”, comparing himself to the smallest tree on earth. I have always loved Rigoni Stern not only because we are compatriots, but especially because those who know me know how much I love the mountains. I have often written about it in the blog when I want to be completely at peace with myself, I go up into the woods in silent meditation, among nature.

Stern described himself in the book Stagioni: “I was born at the beginning of winter, in the mountains, and snow has accompanied my life”.

Mario Rigoni Stern loved the mountains, loved nature. A convinced environmentalist, he said that men must understand that nature has a limit, beyond which life will disappear. One cannot exploit water, air, green spaces unconditionally. Today he would be at the forefront with Greta in the Fridays For Future, even back then he realized that with blah blah blah you don’t get anywhere.

A few months ago, I had the fortune to participate in a walk in the woods with a guide of the small Dolomites. The path was inspired by Mario Rigoni Stern’s book Arboreto salvatico. The writer loved trees and compared them to the temperament of human beings. We had to discover which tree was in harmony with our character. 20 trees to discover, each more majestic or shy, fragrant, our tree.

From left, linden, walnut, and chestnut.

When in 1998 in Padua Stern received the Honorary degree in environmental and forest sciences during his speech he said: “I was a boy when I opened my eyes to nature and everything happened with such spontaneity”

“The forest is indeed everyone’s asset, but not for everyone. The forest, cathedral of creation. The lights filtering from above, the rustles, the sounds, the smells, the colors are means to turn your emotions into prayers, to offer without words to a God that one does not know. Perhaps from here for the first time in man was born the idea, the thought, the reflection”.

Every time I read these words, I am moved, every time I am in a forest walking, I am moved.

Years ago at an evening in honor of Rigoni Stern, Ottavia Piccolo read a short story of his from Il libro degli animali – Einaudi ed. 1990

Of course, even then, I cried.

THE LOST ROE DEER

“As every morning, the team of lumberjacks had left before dawn. The village was asleep, and only when they reached the top along the ridge did they hear the bells of dawn. They set down their sacks and began their work. They worked for a long time, until noon, when they stopped for a longer break. To eat, they retreated into the shade, inside the forest. Not far away, the sound of a roe deer’s footsteps could be heard, and from across the valley, the rumble of weather.

– A storm is coming – said one of them. And the water was already pouring among the branches, and thunder and lightning broke the silence. The youngest, just a boy, moved away to look for a piece of bark with which to cover the chainsaw.

Suddenly, his companions heard him shout: – Come and see, there’s a newborn roe deer in the clearing. The other three also went out into the storm and followed him running.

They saw the little animal almost lifeless among the wet ferns. A lumberjack bent down to pick it up and take it to the dry, but the one who had first spotted it stopped him:

– Don’t touch it!, – if it senses your smell, the mother will abandon it. Said the boy, whose eyes were almost wet.

By now, they were wet even inside their shoes and under their wool sweaters; with vigor, they cleared and sharpened four big branches. They stuck them into the ground around the roe deer and then skillfully placed the bark to make a roof, so they wouldn’t drip underneath.

It started to hail, and the grains beat down from the trees, cones and twigs; the hunter lumberjack took off his jacket and held it stretched over the roe deer:

– Who knows if the mother will find it, said one. They are strong, the eldest reassured him. It will make it, but the mother should find it.

The little one was trembling from the cold, but it seemed calm. They gathered their backpacks and started up the path.

The next morning, the sky was so clear that you could count the trees on the ridges of distant mountains. The gamekeeper climbed with the four lumberjacks and went together to the roe deer’s shelter. Carefully, they removed the bark placed as a roof over the branches, but underneath, the roe deer was no longer there.

– The mother must have come to take it, – said one of the lumberjacks.

– Feel, the nest is still warm, – added another, touching the pressed ferns with a hand. They stood in silence for a while, and uphill, on the forest ridge, they heard a brief rustling and the swaying of branches. Then bleating.

– It’s them, – said the gamekeeper. – She came to take it: they made it.

Did you feel moved too?

I don’t know if you’ve ever walked through woods and seen roe deer in the distance at dusk, stopping in silence so as not to disturb… feeling one with nature and breathing and being grateful to be there.

Turning around and dreaming, seeing that Mario is also walking lightly through the woods, approaching gently and inviting him to lunch. With a sweet smile of a wise father nodding, deciding to offer him a soup of the kind he loved most.

So I prepared a vegetable broth also with pine needles, added barley, cabbage, potatoes, savoy cabbage, pumpkin, a handful of lentils and the indispensable kumo (meadow cumin). I am convinced that Mario would appreciate the simplicity of this “root food”.

Yes, Rigoni Stern loved simple mountain traditional dishes. Consider, for example, that Mario appreciated very much the Considera (a particular dough of potatoes, white flour, butter, onions, and cinnamon). The Cavrizza (corn flour and milk), the Mosa (water, milk, butter, and yellow flour), the Kraut (field herbs boiled and pan-fried, not to be confused with sauerkraut).

His wife said he was fond of sweets and chocolate. He remembered the goodness and scent of hay, polenta, and cheese that arrived from home when in 1940 he was in Albania. He also loved game meat, but also soups like the “Sliba,” similar to the one I prepared for him today.

With this soup, I participate in the IL CIBO DI MARIO

The role of food in the literature and life of Mario Rigoni Stern: research and re-enactments in a virtual challenge to rediscover root food, with the words of food bloggers from AIFB.

I leave you with other soups that I particularly love