The Walking Forest
Imagine opening your front door to a mighty tree. Waiting for you, at the threshold to your home, a wordless visitor of majestic green. A silent, sacred union rep for all that which is life-bearing, life-giving. Holy & wild.
Emilie Miller
Photographs above © Anna Barbaro, 2025
Stumbling upon the image of a tree, walking casually through a tiny rural village in southern Italy, caught my attention while I was scrolling Instagram, during a bout of writer procrastination, in the midst of back-to-back story deadlines. It was then and there I began learning about the village of Satriano di Lucania and their mystical turned ecological ancient Carnival Ritual of The Walking Forest. Where and when the trees leave Bosco Spera, a forest aptly named Hope, on foot, leading a great, green procession into town—a silent, but powerful environmental art piece, a protest of rustling leaves, catalysed into an enduring ecological movement by Satriano di Lucania’s youngest generations. The Young Are At The Gates.
I sent A La Luz this magical image of a tree strolling down the street, and they asked if I’d be interested in writing an article about this quietly powerful piece of environmental protest art which embodies so many moving elements—ecological-focused art, community, and the significant power of small acts influencing the collective whole. I immediately said yes.
There were so many reasons to say yes. I am an American writer living in Italy who has written about the resounding cultural impact of tiny rural Italian villages. I have also written about and helped to create environmental land art, most entirely focused on an obsessive fondness for trees (and recently exhibited in Points of Return). Exploring art as a supplemental tool to inspire environmental citizenry and asking the question: how do we help to create an emotional connection to the human impact environmental data available to us? And then, how do we convert feeling into action?
I am also a concerned citizen and witness to what is currently happening in my home-country regarding environmental protections, regulations, and rhetoric. Watching and reading, in shock, outrage, and despair, as government websites associated with the environment, ecology, sustainability, and years of documented science and research are being dismantled, erased, and wiped clean. Culture, fact, and reason—strip searched and demeaned. Often the institutional intention of instilling shock and fear is to create a feeling of ineptitude and paralysis. When you feel like your actions won’t matter, you are less likely to act.
And to be honest, when I began writing this environmental-art-themed piece, I felt absolutely paralysed. As though somehow, the words from within my own being, were also being scraped, smothered, and replaced with the demoralising refrain: but it won’t matter & it won’t do any good. At its most noble, I believe art aspires to give the tools for how to listen and how to see things that may normally go unnoticed. To be heard and seen is profound. Things are less easily dismissed or destroyed when they are no longer abstract.
“Good place-language, well used, opens onto mystery, grows knowledge, and summons wonder. And in the absence of an exact and detail-giving lexis, the living world can blur into a generalized wash of green, becoming an easily disposable backdrop… and as such, more exploitable…
Having such language available to us is vital because it encourages the kinds of allegiance and intimacy with one’s places that might also go by the name of love, and out of which might arise care, grace, and good sense…”
When language is under assault—being swiftly removed, banned, or red flagged—words can become a protest. Words can repair and rebuild. Telling stories, beyond being my work, becomes a form of resilience, defiance, and vital, life-affirming record keeping. Once we know the stories, we become more than mere spectators. We become fellow custodians, these stories become ours to love, to carry, to protect, and to share.
This is also where ancient cultural rituals come in very handy. A helpful antidote to paralysis is to refer to that which has been repeated for thousands of years and therefore, boldly implies that there will exist a future, whereby it can, and will, keep infinitely repeating. Satriano di Lucania exemplifies and embodies this form of radical hope. The science of resilience tells us that another helpful action is to lean on community. So, I am going to conjure the words of wise souls who’ve managed to evade creative paralysis, those brilliant mark makers who keep me inspired, informed, and tethered to hope on days when I cannot find my own. Hope and progress of any kind may very well be a marathon, a long road demanding our stamina, but it is important to remember they are only truly sustainable when we engage with them as a relay. We are each a part of an inseparable, earthly whole.
Now, let us go to the trees and to the alchemical environmental art piece, Carnival of Satriano di Lucania, The Walking Forest. The trees have stories to tell, and the youth are urging us to listen.
Photographs above © Francesca Zito, 2025
“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.”
Satriano di Lucania
Satriano di Lucania is a rural Italian village of less than 2,300 inhabitants located in the mountainous, wooded region of Basilicata, Italy. If the map of Italy is a boot, you will find the southern region of Basilicata in the arch of the foot. Satriano di Lucania is uniquely positioned, due to the fact that it is entirely ensconced within the protected Appennino Lucano-Val d'Agri-Lagonegrese National Park whose 69,000-hectares comprise some of the most sprawling and intact forests in all of Italy, home to a rich biodiversity.
This region’s history as custodians of the trees extends back centuries. Here, Pagan beliefs considered forests to be sacred temples and trees to be guardians of divine spirits. This religion’s laws and rites were shaped by respect for and celebration of nature, inexorably binding the lives and fates of humans to trees. Not surprisingly, a world still awash in forest, modern-day Basilicata maintains two beautiful, ancient arboreal rituals.
The Marriage of the Trees in May and The Walking Forest of the Carnival of Satriano in February or March, where the woods literally promenade into town for the day and go, door-to-door, making house calls. Imagine if all the trees in Central Park took to the streets of New York City. Here trees become pilgrims and we humans become those to whom they pray.
In Italy, centuries-old traditions for Carnival / Carnevale, have evolved from what could be described as a patchwork quilt of Pagan, Roman, and Christian roots. Marking the end of winter, the anticipation of spring, and the beginning of the season of lent leading to Easter.
Photograph above © Anna Barbaro, 2025
Carnival of Satriano di Lucania
Where Trees Become People & People Become Trees
“It is worth recalling here that our word ‘ecology’ comes from the Greek ‘oikos’, meaning ‘household,’ ‘dwelling.’ Ecology is literally the study of home.”
Imagine opening your front door to a mighty tree.
Quietly, powerfully, waiting for you.
At the threshold to your home, a wordless visitor of majestic green.
A silent, sacred union rep for all that which is life-bearing, life-giving. Holy and wild.
Home to home.
Breath to breath:
Our most intimate, essential exchange,
this reciprocal dance of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
No sales pitch, no political speech, no pamphlets, or slogans—
Only the penetrating presence of the natural world. Our only world. Our only home.
A gentle confrontation of softly rustling leaves.
And who is within the world of green?
A man? A spirit? A child? Ourselves? The past? The pleading future?
Of course, all of this is up for interpretation. In Satriano di Lucania, the walking tree is known as La Rumita, The Hermit, and there are various explanations for this name. And perhaps cause for interpretation and contemplation is the whole, crucial, pressing point. For rituals. For art. Contemplation engenders consciousness. Consciousness engenders care. Care promotes action. Community protects and enables action. You cannot force people to care about a tree or a child, but we can enact laws and regulations to enforce their protection.
“I wonder how it is we have come to this place in our society where art and nature are spoke in terms of what is optional, the pastime and concern of the elite?”
“A culture is no better than its woods.”
“Art and nature are siblings, branches of the one tree.”
“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”
For centuries, this carnevale-ritual comprised principally of one man dressing up in what is known as an eco-friendly mask, a maschera, a woven costume of invasive ivy pulled from the forest, transfiguring the human into the body and spirit of a tree; the merging of temple and guardian, the convergence of inner and outer nature. Other characters seen during the Carnival include The Bear (representing prosperity) and The Lent (representing the difficulty that widowed women endured in the past). Donato Perrone, a citizen of Satriano di Lucania, explains “it’s beautiful – the feeling you get when you go inside this mask. It’s something that fills your soul. Many people want to participate, precisely because they feel in touch with nature.”
In 2013, the Italian artist and director Michelangelo Frammartino visited Satriano di Lucania to make a film about La Foresta Che Cammina, The Walking Forest ritual. For the film, Frammartino proposed the idea of 131 walking trees, instead of the one traditional tree, to symbolically represent the 131 villages throughout Basilicata. Alberi exhibited at the MOMA in New York City and was the beginning of a ritual evolution revolution through art.
Just as humans transfigured into tree spirits for a day, the younger generations of Satriano took over the proceedings and began to powerfully transfigure their village’s pagan Carnevale ritual into an urgent contemporary ecological message, a silent environmental protest via a procession of walking trees. One walking tree transformed into a whole walking forest, growing in size every year, a peaceful green invasion of eco-warriors, a world-wide invitation and call-to-action led movingly by the town’s youngest citizens.
Seeing images of Satriano’s children dressed as trees and leading this green pilgrimage, reminded me of marching alongside thousands of children in New York City in 2019 during the Children’s March: The Friday for Future strikes and protests. On this day, millions of children left school all around the world, protesting Climate Change and pleading for the future—their future. I think about those children a lot. The visceral power of their vast numbers, their self and planet advocacy, their urgent protest signs—equal parts anger, love, and admonishment of us, their heedless elders. Begging us to not burn down the one home they are meant to inherit. And what would we say to the children now? How have we answered their call?
“Are we being good ancestors?”
It is worth noting, that on Satriano di Lucania’s Carnevale’s website, which invites all humans to become trees and ecology messengers for the day, the warnings regarding the task of transforming into a tree are equally applicable to the challenges of becoming an environmentally conscious citizen:
BECOME RUMITA: TREE FOR A DAY
A TRADITION IN TRANSITION
The ecological warriors, anonymous and completely covered in ivy, will invade the streets of Satriano… to tell everyone that it is necessary to re-establish an ancient relationship with the Earth to preserve the ideal climatic conditions suitable for the survival of future generations.
The young people of Satriano intend to use the Rumita to launch a universal ecological message that is a reversal of values, a Copernican revolution: re-establishing an ancient relationship with the Earth to respect the men and women who will inhabit it in the future.
IMPORTANT NOTES
Wearing the Rumita is not for everyone. It is a mystical, wonderful experience but at the same time, perhaps for this reason, tiring and sometimes difficult.
“Environmental revolution is the revolution of our generation.”
Photographs above © Luigi Bruno, 2024
“Time is kept and curated in different ways by trees, and so it is experienced in different ways when one is among them. This discretion of trees, and their patience, are both affecting. It is beyond our capacity to comprehend that the American hardwood forest waited seventy million years for people to come and live in it, though the effort of comprehension is itself worthwhile. It is valuable and disturbing to know that grand oak trees can take three hundred years to grow, three hundred years to live and three hundred years to die. Such knowledge, seriously considered, changes the grain of the mind…”
The science of resilience also explains that we are more likely to keep active in any cause when we can see measurable impact of our efforts, no matter how small. Thanks to the efforts of Satriano’s newest generations, their Carnival became and remains an entirely green event. Materials used, waste disposal, transportation, food and beverage products, and impact of increasing tourism are all thoughtfully and meticulously considered. Carnival floats are eco-themed and made from eco-friendly materials. Trees are planted by students to offset C02 emissions created by the annual event. An ancient traditional ritual, rooted in tree guardianship, is now imbued with modern-day environmental activism that moves beyond mere symbolism. Basilicata has historically been one of Italy’s most economically impoverished regions and Satriano proves that neither size of population nor resources determines the ability to embrace a leadership role in environmental citizenry. This is when art transcends mere reflection and transmutes, inspiring authentic, enthusiastic, and repeated action.
“…How it will unfold depends in no small part on what we do. People too often think hope is smiles and sunshine, when it’s fury in the face of danger and oppression, and pressing on in the storm… Even so, ‘rage is a form of prayer too,’ as Reverend Dr. Renita J. Weems…. I suspect she means that behind that rage is care, and this is something I have found secular activists often forget – you are angry the children are being bombed or the forest is being cleared because you care about them, so it’s not the feelings about the forces of destruction that is primary.
It’s the love, and not losing sight of that is crucial…”
And if love for what we want to protect is the ultimate combatant of paralysis and cynicism, then certainly gratitude is its co-conspirator:
“I truly appreciated the co-participation and co-creation: being an active part rather than a spectator, the overall sense of community—the same spirit that lives in the forest” one Carnival attendee comments. “I was deeply moved by the moment of absolute silence, when the tree-people descend from the forest into the village” recalls another. “The care in preparing each detail, the humanity, the silence of the descent … the warm welcome from the village, the music, the simplicity. The humanity and the universality of the message.”
Satriano has already announced the dates for 2026’s Procession of Walking Trees. As they have for centuries, they are boldly planning for the future. Insisting upon its existence. The children and trees will be marching. They are inviting you to join.
Inspiring & informative reading materials for combatting those moments of citizenry despondency & paralysis:
Become a Rumita / Walking Tree in the Next Carnival of Satriano di Lucania
What’s the Best Thing I can do for the Planet?
What Can I Do About the Climate Emergency by Rebecca Solnit
Geography as Generosity: an Afternoon with Barry Lopez by Robert Macfarlane
What we owe our Trees by Jill Lepore
Night of the Gingko by Oliver Sacks
What do the Protectors of the Congo’s Peatlands get in Return? by Ruth Maclean
Barry Lopez and ‘The Tree’ by Caitlin Roper
A Day in the Life of a Tree by M.R. O’Connor
Dead Stars by Ada Limón
Let Them Not Say by Jane Hirshfield
Authors to explore:
Katie Holten
Barry Lopez
Robert Macfarlane
Richard Powers
Terry Tempest Williams
Peter Wohllben
“Forests fed us, housed us, and made our way of life possible. But they can’t save us if we can’t save them.”
Text © Emilie Miller, 2025; Published by A La Luz, April 2025 | Images used with permission | Please do not copy or download any of the content on this page without written consent
