When for the first time I heard of Candiano and the big oak that, as impressive guard watched over the plain with vineyards and ruins, my curiosity let me go with my car, half-rickety, until Buonopane, tiny fraction of Barano. A neighbour of Buonopane often spoke with me about this oak, enthusiastically and with deep nostalgia that I began to imagine the town where she had lived a serene childhood, and where the inhabitants of the area gathered in spring under the big Oak to tell about stories of ghosts and werewolves.

Although it was not the first time that I walked among trails, farm houses and giant trees, I was enchanted to admire the majestic oak, generous with its strong arms seemed to embrace and protect the people of good will from the follies of the world. The trunk was large, with roots completely nude, twisted and gnarled full of bumps, ledges and recesses. One had the impression that a great master with a chisel wanted to create sculptures, creating overlying undefined and strange figures of animals, plants, human figures, mountains, hills. It looked a miniature world in which we could immerse into the bowels of the Earth. Local farmers were not accustomed to see strangers walking in that reign of peace and silence.

I felt that behind windows and balconies there were eyes that followed closely every movement, every gesture, as if I was an extraterrestrial. All of a sudden, in that Kingdom apparently lifeless, pop up an old woman who had with her a goat tied to a string.

She was suspicious and with familiar tone asked me: "who are you, what are you doing here?" I tried to put she at ease, I replied: "I come from Forio and I like to walk through the countryside. Luisella, my neighbour who was born in this place has often told about Candiano and its oak".

The old woman changed her suspicious attitude instantly and began to chat with me as if I known her all along.

She told me about Luisella, from her childhood spent in that little idyllic spot and the sadness throughout the country which relatives and friends had tried when she went to live with her husband in a town where there were modern and educated citizens, far from their way of living and thinking.

She told me also that she had twin sons and that when they were child were sick of typhus. As she believed in oak, as a divine presence that keeps watch over all of their well-being, with love and health, and when she was desperate and the little boys were ill, she burned in a fire leaves and acorns of the plant sending out the essence in the air and in the whole House for new impetus and vital energy.

She took the bark, put it in a bag tied to a nail in the bedroom. It is not clear whether, for deep faith or Divine Providence, the two children recovered from illness restarted to live a normal life. Even the goats eating the acorns and leaves, gained strength and vitality. "We must believe in plants and in nature", she told me,-"because can do miracles". I confess that I poured into a plastic bag dry leaves and acorns.

The peasant girl, before my departure, wanted to give me milk goat and invited me to go back there whenever I was down in the dumps. The great oak had need to feel beloved in return would have infused energy in soul and body.

Before I went away, I was attracted like a magnet from the entrance of a ruin with a huge stone portal, inside a dilapidated stairway where inside was full of moss and grasses. I crossed a courtyard where there was a cistern with a rusty bucket and lemon plants all around. At the bottom of the courtyard there was a kitchenette with oven and the stove on which aluminum pans were scattered. At the center, three was a rectangular table set with a tablecloth by now torn, plates, cutlery, glasses, bottles, three straw chairs and a bench. Everything was covered with soot, dust, intricate webs which, from the ceiling, that seemed many transparent veils above the plates, bottles, cutlery. There was a strong feeling, as if the life, was interrupted abruptly, but that it could resume at any time. Outside the courtyard I admired all around the country, the ruins, the Hill of Buttavento. I glanced at the oak tree whose branches leafy blended with the colors and the immensity of heaven. The evening began to fall. Oak keeps watch in silence like a great mother.