Avez del Prinzep was considered the largest and oldest spruce tree in the world, dating back to the second half of the 1700s. In November 2018, following a strong storm with unusual winds that were too sudden for these latitudes, the tree ...See moreAvez del Prinzep was considered the largest and oldest spruce tree in the world, dating back to the second half of the 1700s. In November 2018, following a strong storm with unusual winds that were too sudden for these latitudes, the tree fell after 250 years in which it had seen and survived the Napoleonic wars, the Unification of Italy, the First and Second World Wars and the Cold War. In over two centuries, Avez has bequeathed to us the entire forest that surrounds it, made up of its "children", the other fir trees that it has grown around, and in which generations of inhabitants of the Cimbrian highlands have found refuge, sustenance and raw materials. With Avez wood, the inhabitants of these places on the border between Trentino and Veneto, the last to speak Cimbrian, an archaic and medieval Germanic language, have decided to create sculptures, tools and even a string quartet, after discovering Avez's latest gift. The wood from the tree, in fact, turned out to be resonance wood, suitable for the creation of stringed instruments, by the only local luthier. Through the eyes of some of them, such as the luthier himself or the only forest ranger on the plateau, but also a sculptor who moved to the area to work the wood, creating big sculpture, and a writer of poems and nursery rhymes in the Cimbrian language, who keeps its memory alive, we retrace, from the end of summer until late autumn with the arrival of the first snow, places, traditions, legends and roots of a place and its people who, like their trees, do not abandon their mysticism and their link with history.
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