I was about eleven years old, my father had a small piece of land outside the city, I felt lucky. We spent the weekends in that country house which had everything we needed. The fireplace, which my father lit early in the morning, gave the view of the glow of the fire from my small room. The sound of the coffee machine, which was followed by the scent of coffee, was the alarm that heralded another day to spend in the midst of nature. Those were the years of the discovery of a fascinating territory, with its abandoned mines that were a counterbalance to those still in activity. The sound of the siren signaled the change of shift of the workers and could be heard from miles away, marking the time even for us children. Sometimes, that signal, out of hours and without interruption, foreshadowed serious events that had occurred in the tunnel. A shiver ran down the backs of all of us as we silently awaited the arrival of news like messages carried by the wind, with voices that followed one another until the final outcome, most often tragic. This, however, was our life and, with the exception of these facts, it flowed with the awareness of being part of a community that had the mine at the center of our lives. This multiplied in us the desire to adventurously discover the origins of our history, leading us to explore abandoned mining areas, exclusively on foot or with modest and small bikes. Old mines that still had traces of human work well carved in the rocks, on the roads. I don’t even remember how many times I walked along the steep slopes of the San Giorgio hills. I did it alone, without fear, trying to memorize, as much as I could, every little reference so as not to get lost and go home in time for dinner. Only now, after half a century, do I realize how much those little adventures have sharpened my senses. Above all, that of orientation, but also that of an aesthetic vision of the path that still makes me fully enjoy my treks. Those walks were not well regarded by my parents and adults in general anyway. Those places were dangerous for a child and after all they could not understand the reason for those treks that lasted hours. Why struggle to go in search of nothing? This was, in fact, for them those desolate places, where there was no longer anything of interest to see, and this was demonstrated by the fact that even the mining companies were no longer there. Here, I think that for our old people the world was just that, the mine. Where there was a mine there was life, work, fun, friends. Above all walking, an exclusively functional activity dedicated to going to the workplace, never a fun for its own sake. This did not matter to me and I continued my exploratory paths which, on the other hand, never stopped and continued to push me further in the discovery, to the point of acquiring even more value when I met new friends with the same interests as mine.

On that morning of a rainy January when I took the usual break to admire the Nebida coast from the belvedere, I reflected on the work represented by that systematic network of roads, railways and mule tracks that basically served the mines for the transport of the mineral or of the workers employed in the various construction sites in the area. A result obtained above all by means of a work done in most of the times exclusively by hand.

Paths and territory, in fact, are inextricably linked to each other, as Torbjon Ekelund says, therefore each environment has communication routes whose original characteristics derive from the economic activities and culture of the communities of a place.

The Iglesiente therefore, dominated for centuries by an economy based on the extraction of metals from the subsoil, has seen generations of men building roads and paths, created specifically to go to work or to transport goods. A widespread network of mule tracks, cart tracks and railways for exclusive industrial use. The mines, the processing plants which, in most cases, were built very far from the inhabited centers, obliged the miners to travel along impervious mule tracks even for hours. While the widespread construction of cart tracks and railways was essentially wanted by the mining companies, the miners themselves also unwittingly contributed to the emergence of new communication routes. After all, finding the shortest route to work meant saving precious time from a day that involved more than ten hours in the dark underground. Even in the woods of the mountains surrounding the metalliferous basin there are still kilometers of path. In most cases they are traces left by the lumberjacks who supplied the timber for the construction of tunnels, or the coal for the steam engines often used to operate the winches in the mining shafts. In short, this whole network was functional to productive activities and the walking of that historical period did not have the playful, aesthetic meaning that we could attribute to it today.

At the end of the industrial epic, with the anthropic retreat from certain areas, nature had recovered what had been taken from it, hiding a good part of that path network.

I was wondering how many kilometers I could still cover those paths marked on the now obsolete maps and if maybe there was still a small trace of them. While I continued in my explorations throughout the Sardinian territory, in those years, a small network of volunteers went to find unknown corners of the hinterland of Nebida and Masua, cleaning and carrying out almost constant maintenance of these traces of the industrial epic. It was also the period in which hikers began to discover the mythical path Miniere nel Blu, a walkway overlooking the sea that connects the beach of Masua to that of Cala Domestica. The first time I set out on those steep hairpin bends that lead to the ridge of Monte Nai, I was enchanted by the beauty of that place that began to see a weakened vegetation grow back, not only by human activities, but also by fires. Those visible scars were still there, represented by dry stone walls, ruins of small houses, calcination ovens, tunnels, mule tracks and paths that slowly, thanks to their obsolescence and total abandonment, were disappearing overwhelmed by the Mediterranean scrub, never tamed, never defeated by man.

I could never have said that I had entered a wild environment, in fact it had always been quite the opposite. Those places had seen only an incisive action of men and women who for hundreds of years have tried to extract the maximum profit from its rich subsoil. Only recently had there been a slowdown in the presence of man in certain areas, and this was mainly due to the closure of several mining sites. We were in the late eighties and a profound crisis was gripping the entire mining sector of Sulcis Iglesiente. Whenever the prospect of a total closure of extractive activities arose, the trade union struggle, together with strong pushes from a united political front, managed to remove from year to year the specter of a catastrophic social crisis that would have presented itself by losing those posts. of work. At the same time, however, these partial successes projected on the community the mirage of an infinite postponement of the end of the industrial epic. But it was now running out and, in 1992, the decision came to that much feared definitive closure of the largest and most productive Iglesiente mines. We immediately had the feeling that nothing would be the same as before, and now we were hypothesizing different scenarios, from the most apocalyptic ones of those who thought that this territory would not have made it without industry, to the most optimistic ones proposed by those who believed in an economic reconversion that would soon see those dark galleries repopulated with tourists wearing helmets and carbide lamps.

Among the latter were Flaviano Bessone and Bruno Fonnesu . I heard about it as two visionaries who, when everyone defended the policy of industrialization of the territory, made people talk about themselves for having introduced the words free climbing and trekking in this area. The first even recently moved to Sardinia to give life to the “Cà da Pria” Bed and Breakfast, well known among climbing enthusiasts. Those were the years when a certain Manolo , aka Maurizio Zanolla, the free-climber par excellence, frequented the cliffs of the Iglesiente coast assiduously, so much so that he could be defined as a local.

I was fascinated by that world of adventurers, and that rainy morning I had the opportunity to meet Giuseppe, Bruno Fonnesu’s brother. I was exposed to one of their, albeit still vague, project to enhance the territory. His story showed the pride of being part of a community that had lived the mine as a family. The identity values were pushing them among other things to bring to light a good part of the historical paths of the Nebida area. Of course it was not an easy job and above all there were no funds or contributions from third parties to be able to think about a success in this enterprise. However, they were driven by an unparalleled passion, carrying out a systematic cleaning and maintenance work that in the future would have seen the birth of the network of trails in the southwestern area that embraces various municipal areas, from Portoscuso to Buggerru.

It was May 3, 2005 when the Verde Azzurro Pan di Zucchero association was founded. It has a very long name, sometimes difficult to remember, but for the creators it must become the symbol of a territory that wants to see its rebirth start from the icon of the highest stack in Italy and from the green of its Mediterranean scrub overlooking the blue of its sea. It is no coincidence that the activity of these volunteers has always remained profoundly driven by these values, suggesting hikers who walk along the paths on the coast to keep their attention focused on what they will observe on land, but also on the sea for what it represented and represents today for the Iglesiente. When we talk about the southwest of the island, in fact, we don’t immediately think of the importance that the sea had for its economic and cultural development. Despite the fact that most human activities were carried out even tens of kilometers from the coast, that blue has always been what determined their luck or misfortune.

Think of how much being isolated from the rest of the peninsula has had an impact on transport , on the development of industry. An important obstacle that only technology and, above all the innovative ideas born exclusively in this specific economic and social context, have gradually made less impact. Not only that, sometimes being close to the coast has meant having some advantages, such as the possibility of having easier access to the coast water resource or even that of disposing of millions of liters of water of meteoric origin, as in the case represented by the Umberto I tunnel, a work that is today remembered for having given a turning point to the relaunch of the extraction activities of the large Monteponi mine.

The colors recalled by the logo of the Nebidese association are then the symbols that identify its continuous voluntary action in promoting the culture of sustainable development and environmental protection, especially in an area that still shows the wounds inflicted by industry over the centuries. of its history. In almost twenty years of events , photographic exhibitions, guided treks, and last but not least the maintenance of the paths, VAPDZ has made known the beauties of a coast that were not yet contemplated in the brochures of travel agencies. In that not-so-distant past, this was hardly a place to go on vacation and, with mining still in place, most of the places visitors can see today were totally off limits. Dangerous places that continue to be dangerous due to their peculiarity of disused mining areas in some cases totally devoid of signs and safety perimeters. This obliges everyone to carefully follow the signs along the paths and never cross the fences that delimit the risk areas and, in the case of some sites, not to venture into the abandoned tunnels. After all, this is also the charm of a territory that has no equal in the national hiking scene. Sometimes feeling like Indiana Jones can give emotions that would not be felt in other naturalistic contexts and, following those inaccessible mule tracks and those paths that lead to the old mines overlooking the sea, also has the value of rediscovering a past that emotionally involves the visitor, until he decides to return to those places to continue the search for that endless treasure.

VAPZ today continues its research activity for new trekking routes, creating them with difficulty levels that can mean a simple walk or difficult and impervious variants that require good physical and technical preparation. However, most of the routes are suitable for a wide range of hikers, from the less experienced to the more demanding ones who are also looking for adrenaline-pumping passages.