Petrichor
The Bucamante Waterfalls (the legend of the Lovers’ Pit)
The petrichor is the scent of wet earth that is intensely perceived during and after summer rains. It is a distinct aroma, a fragrance with a nostalgic and wild allure that reactivates the animalistic side of our sense of smell. It’s the scent that awakens memories of damp woods, where streams, waterfalls, and rain carve through the earth and rocks, creating the ideal habitat for mosses and fungi. Environments where, without knowing why, we feel good, feel at home, and adore sensing their presence with all our senses.
The place where this video was shot is permeated and imbued with these scents. Water, wet earth, leaves, rock. A small treasure protected by dense vegetation, and one is led along narrow paths immersed in the woods, where trees bend, as if to bow, towards the stream that flows and leaps between tall rocks, creating a continuous sequence of small waterfalls. (Photo of the bent trees)
In this evocative place, an ancient and tragic folk legend unfolds.
The story tells of Odina, a beautiful young blonde lady with blue eyes, a noblewoman who lived in a castle and loved to stroll along these paths in the company of her maid.
One day, during one of her walks, she encountered a poor shepherd, Titiro, also a handsome young man. The two fell in love instantly and in the following days met in secret.
This secret did not last long. The maid told everything to Odina’s parents, who, to punish her, locked her in the castle, forbidding her from meeting the young shepherd again.
However, the girl managed to escape and ran to reach Titiro again. Her escape was soon noticed, and the searches immediately started from the castle. The two young lovers, hearing in the distance the shouts of Odina’s servants approaching to find her, decided that nothing could ever separate them again. In a final and eternal embrace, they jumped together into a waterfall. The impact with the ground caused it to sink, creating a pit dozens of meters deep that sealed their love forever. From that day, that place took the name of the Lovers’ Pit.
By pure coincidence, an enormous rock in the shape of a human heart is still found today at the base of one of these waterfalls.
(Photo of the heart-shaped rock)
The Bucamante Waterfalls are located in Serramazzoni (Modena), Northern Italy.
