Tiziano Fratus is a celebrated Italian writer, artist, poet and rambling man.
Regularly reviewed in the Italian national media, with exhibitions in Natural History Museums, Festivals, Botanic Gardens, Regional and National Parks, his poetry has been translated in several languages and presented in Italian Cultural Institutes in North America, Europe and Asia.
He is a tree seeker and advocates the philosophy that we have roots intangibly linked to tree roots and through this connection it is easier for us to understand our wider connection with our landscapes. homoradix.com
Here he writes exclusively for SOW:
Homo Radix
To be a Rootman or a Rootwoman, a Rootboy or a Rootgirl (Homo Radix / Phoemina Radix / Puer Radix / Puera Radix)
Everyone could be a Rootboy, Rootgirl, Rootman or a Rootwoman, someone who tries to identify his or her roots; physically, theoretically, literary and materially. Roots are changing everyday, acquiring the colours, dimensions, peculiarities that modify the identity of Human Beings’ themselves.
Every Man and every Woman is full of roots! A Rootman is the individual who decides to cultivate their imaginary and physical identity, living in first person with a deep interaction with the Landscape.
Every Green Space could be this Landscape: the park in your town, the garden of your house, the forest on the Alps or in Alaska. Also in the heart of the Society of Humans, in the middle of the great Metropolis (New York, London, Singapore or Tokyo), you can farm these roots walking in the public park, in the botanical garden, in any little space devoted to Nature.
A Rootman can understand the great design of the Lord of Creatures; understanding to distinguish species and varieties, to characterise old tree specimens and their age. You can map this place, giving names to animals and trees, discover them and create your own personal ‘Treegraphy’ (in Italian ‘Alberografia’).
This is a way to enhance personally and socially the biodiversity of our landscape, to discover more of what we consider all too often as expectable, not so important – only a tree or only a park. This is a way to begin a long trip that is so full of elements and creatures you understand the complete history of our land, our province, our region or State. A personal study that makes you more rooted in the land you live, you work, you love.
We all can become Tree Seekers’, Rootmen or Rootwomen who cross the Landscape (a country, a continent, the world) to find old monumental / champion trees, the biggest and oldest creatures living on Earth.
Tiziano Fratus (born 1975) is a rambler, a tree hunter, photographer, writer, designer of footpaths and landscape scholar. He has published books and guides dedicated to trips and wanderings in the Italian Landscape, from the north of the Country, on the Alps, to the Southern Islands as Sicily and
Sardinia, from the biggest Towns as Rome, Milan, Turin and Genoa to the little villages of the Provinces. Fratus works on a new form of identity, both local and international, through the evaluation of the heritage and secular trees in his region, the Piedmont (NW Italy), his country and the world. He works to create a new simple way to allow humans to feel proud to live and work in their locality on the Earth.
