In memory of an Old Friend, by Biagio Camponeschi

In Memory of an Old Friend
by Biagio Camponeschi

    Hello Giorgio and I intentionally do not say goodbye. I remember those days, I did not know they were your last ones, when you often came to meet me at the University of Perugia after we severed our relations for a long time.
    And I still remember, in those occasions, our long talks while drinking a glass of red wine, telling stories and facts about friends of ours. I had no news about them in many years.
    And I was amazed at your ability to remember very well facts and events of a distant past, as it amazed me in the first years of our friendship, like if you were a computer.

    I joined the Circolo Speleologico Romano after Marcello Chimenti invited me and, in many occasions, I admired your organisational ability and your desire of new explorative knowings. Both things led you to the top of Italian Speleology and not only this one.
    I still remember those appalling fatigues to carry the old explorative materials, that limited very much our action inside the caves, and the incomprehensions, that became bigger every week, between the young, of what you were one of the main leaders, and the old cavers that for us were like embalmed mummies, entangled in their memories that were often only handed down tales.
    I joined with juvenile enthusiasm the foundation of Speleo Club Roma and I gave for many years my full availability to the group. I still remember the first days of our activity in many caves that were considered very hard to explore at that time.

    In the 50s our group explored these caves easily, thanks to your experience and our modern criteria, i.e. the use of new equipment that were in the van at least for Italian Speleology, so we could explore very deep caves.
    I felt like if I was flying, thanks to the new light wire-ladders, that we built with our own hands in the first seat of Speleo Club Roma, then in a storehouse at Celio, then in a cellar at "Santa Croce in Gerusalemme" and in the end at the first real seat of our Club, placed near "Fori Imperiali". The old equipment instead made me suffer a lot and I think it was a little inconclusive.
    In these seats we shared, thanks to you, a new explorative mentality that made the most of the sportive side but linked to it a scientific interest with the knowing, as complete as possible, of the Karstic phenomena in the carbonatic rocks of the center-southern Appennino.

    I've been with you in many of the most important speleological explorations of the Central Italy and Southern Italy. I remember, when we prepared the expeditions, your meticulousness in checking the load in the sacks of all of us, and you seemed to know perfectly the strength and the output in hostile and hard environment of every member of the group.
    And I also remember your ability in remembering the exact position of every hold, of every unevenness, and the depth of every pitch: that made our explorations safe and we did not have to take excessive material with us.
    On the anniversary of the day that you left us forever, but only physically, I could meet old friends and renew many friendships. I shared many fatigues and a lot of enthusiasm with them. And most of all I could read your last writing that recalls perfectly, as your character was, some years of our speleological activity of what I honestly lost the memory.
    All those friends that were present at your commemorating ceremony, they all have white hairs now, were very next to you and they always will take you in their hearts, remembering all the teachings you left us, at least in exploring underground caves, giving us the opportunity to see and appreciate that patrimony uncontaminated and hidden below our feet.

    I like to remember you now like you were: always indomitable, with a strong will of exploring that immensity that is all around us.

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