Leaving Matera along via dei Cappuccini we encounter a bar for breakfast and the Antica forneria dei Sassi where you can get something for lunch. Looking back from time to time I see Matera getting smaller, while I learn to use as a reference the green arrows that from now on will mark my path, namely the via Ellenica in reverse.

Roughly halfway through the route, near an abandoned quarry, I take a break in the shade of a bunker for bird watching, which here find an ideal environment and are present in great quantities.

This stage, of about 27 km, is for the most part a substantial descent; when I arrive about 9 km from the end and I must ford the Gravina torrent (trying not to mud my shoes) I find myself at the lowest point; from there onwards the climb towards Ginosa begins with a difference in elevation of over 200 meters. Throughout this entire final part there is the fixed presence of Montescaglioso, which from the top of its hill overlooks the path from every angle, a bit like the eyes of the Mona Lisa.

Arriving at Ginosa, instead of entering the town immediately, I extend further to a particular olive grove, just beyond the bridge, where I search for a special tree called the “Thinking Tree” for the almost human expression recalled by its old gnarled trunk.

For the night I am at Dimora San Martino, a welcoming hostel still expanding, managed by Lorenzo, stage manager and experienced hiker, who created it and beautified it with great care and a passionate attention to detail.

I begin to wander alone through the lower part of the town, which overlooks the ravine; the opposite bank is full of ruins and caves; on this side, instead, the town is substantially abandoned, the Mother Church and the castle are closed and there are only suspicious cats and some groups of kids around.

On the advice of Leonardo, stage manager, I call Mr. Carmelo who reaches me in a few minutes: a former shepherd, born here over 70 years ago, sacristan and eyewitness to Ginosa’s various misfortunes, he helps me decipher the town.

As we walk he tells me about the earthquake from the mid-1800s, he shows me the ruins that were definitively destroyed to film a scene from “The Gospel According to Matthew” by Pasolini, and he tells me about the various floods and landslides that devastated Ginosa in the past decade and emptied the old town (still today uninhabitable and awaiting a utopian return to the normalcy of times past). Between one collapse and another, Ginosa continued to be used as a film set for “Who Has Seen Me?” and “Tulips” (he tells me about the enormous cranes used to place some vintage cars among the narrow streets, hoisting them directly from the bottom of the ravine).

Carmelo accompanied me into a series of caves in the Rivolta district that he himself helped to restore, and that were once inhabited; he shows me, on the opposite bank of the ravine, what, according to him, is the face of a suffering Jesus anguished over how man is mistreating nature, and finally he takes care to have me spot, hidden among the vegetation, the rupestral churches that tomorrow I will be able to easily reach from my path.

In short, Carmelo is a person you have to meet to be able to draw from his long historical memory and to watch him while he observes what remains of his own town as if he had just returned after years away.