olives in apulia

wisdom from the oldest trees on earth

When we first moved to Italy we went to Puglia for 24 hours and I fell in love. Last weekend I returned for a longer stay. I fell even more in love with it than I had before! The access to nature, the amazing food, and the slow pace of life all make me feel relaxed and at home.

It seems every time I turn to Puglia, I am smacked in the face with wisdom. As I’ve written before, I have always been someone to put enormous pressure on myself. I have always been someone who wants things done efficiently and quickly, to maximize the returns, to minimize the inefficiency, to look forward instead of resting in the present moment. I am getting much better at relaxing and not always “looking to the next thing,” but it seems like a lifelong lesson instead of a quick remedy.

Saturday morning we went on a tour of an olive tree farm at a Masseria. There are 60 million olive trees in Italy, the same as the population of Italy! There is one olive tree for every person. Olive trees are part of the “oldest trees on earth” family, including baobabs, sequoias, and bristlecone pines. When our guide mentioned, “sequoias,” my ears perked up. Oh how I miss those big Sequoias!

Our tour guide was lively and spirited. He made jokes about the trees “breasts” as the place where they store water during periods of droughts. Since they can’t tell the rings of the olive trees to identify the age, one way they can tell how old the trees are is by looking at the way they were planted. The Romans planted the olive trees “60 Roman Feet” apart. That’s how they know the trees dated back to Roman time!

The most striking part of the tour was when he talked about how they care for the trees. "We let the trees rest - we don’t push them to the limit. We never use herbicides or pesticides. They usually produce olives every second year and we pick them very gently. But if they don’t - we take care of them, we trim them, and let them rest.”

I have never heard anyone talk about olive trees with such passion and appreciation for a living, breathing, plant. He also spoke about letting the trees bend and wind into whatever shape they like without intervening.

It immediately made me think of humans, how badly we want to deny aging, how much we ingest from the outside instead of relying on our own internal knowing. All of the ridiculous “productivity hacks” we try to push ourselves to get what we want. We aren’t getting results? Reorganize your calendar! Eat superfoods! Add collagen to your coffee! Take supplements! Inject botox!

If we just let ourselves rest and take things off of our plate, I’m sure we’d get to where we were going, just like the olive trees have done for thousands and thousands of years.