My conceiving took place in Levigliani (Mount Corchia) between Christmas 1972 and 1973 New Year's Day: at least, so they told me; well, this way I started caving even before my birth, comfortably carried by my mother in her abdomen.In turn, after my birth, I continued, still carried by my parents, often astride my mother's knapsack; so I got acquainted with many karst areas: I got the members' goat during several congresses, I soon started to show off my knowledge using the typical jargon of the cavers: fault, milonite, kamenitza, chicot, speleogenesis, morphology, etc.
When I decided to go on caving, I didn't suppose that the caves should be so uncomfortable. Moreover, as I am small and thin, very often I am warmly invited to thread my way through the narrowest passages in order to check if the cave goes on (inconvenient heritage from my mother, who was named the "slit-woman").
I always get out from there full of bruises and sometimes loaded with stones, when I'm giving help at some obstruction removal party; once, I particularly remember, I got out pulled on my feet by two companions, while my hands were grasping a big stone which was clogging up the passage: this one got assigned the name "K-passage".
Since I was still a child I had the dangerous idea of drawing some fancied surveys of caves and potholes, just while my parents were plotting down on the right scale the real ones they had just surveyed: so, scarcely grown-up, I found in my hands a bag including compass, clinometre, note-book and a pair of pencils.
I started surveying some small artificial cavities, then short caves and later on kilometres of labyrinthical meanders, pits, marrow passages ... and few comfortable galleries. I suffered from so much cold ...
My indivisible companion is a yellow Minolta Weathermatic, unexcelled camera that unfortunately is no more on the market. This humble gadget survived at more than ten years of hard usage (I always carry it in a padded case, suspended to my neck, in the narrowest passages, into the most muddy or wet tunnels) and gave to me some thousands pictures suddenly clicked during the explorations or the survey operations. When I find a forbearing companion, willing to co-operate with a second or third flash, I succeed in getting some picture fit for publication: really it doesn't happen frequently.
I co-operated, and still I do it, with a few caving clubs in Latium for the discovery, exploration, survey, photography of a lot of new caves in Lepini, Simbruini, Ausoni, Soratte Mountains and to the hard works required to force their frequent obstructions as well. I follow my parents too, in the recess on the artificial ancient cavities that are particularly numerous North of Rome, in the area historically called Tuscia.
To conclude, I try to be a caver and sometimes woodworms cracks in my brain: "may-be it is the longa-manu coming from the enthusiasm of my untameable parents".
