“The leaves danced green, twinkling. I felt that this was the true paradise on earth. Everything that had possessed me, all agonies, disappeared as dreams and illusions and something that could be called true nature was revealed to me.” Masanobu Fukuoka, promoter of natural agriculture. If we were asked about time we would say that it goes too fast, that we often feel the stress of seeing how it escapes us, as, at the end of the day, we have not managed to do everything we had planned. This has not always been like that. In ancient societies, basically agricultural, they conceived time as a constant repetition, as the circular return of what had already happened before. The past was returning and the future, to some extent, was known. Hence the importance of knowledge of grandmothers and grandparents to advise in decision making. They were societies that had a strong connection with nature. The succession of natural cycles, which are repeated incessantly, marked an unchanging rhythm. There was no possibility of speeding up time, or squeezing it, or saving it. Women and men, like nature, were at the service of atmospheric conditions, seasons and lunar cycles. There was a time of hard and constant work and a time of rest and social life. When working the land, planting a garden, growing a forest, we flee from linear, synchronized and also scarce time from everyday life to experiment with cycles, understand the patterns of repetition and immerse ourselves in another temporal conception. The forest invites us to dance to the rhythm of nature, which is a patient and hypnotic rhythm, like that of rotating dervishes. This allows us to relax and live more in the present. Learn, but also unlearn. Do, but also undo. Dilute and expand, understand that we are no longer a part, but a coherent and organic whole with the environment. And that we are not actually sowing seeds to grow plants but to grow ourselves.

Masanobu Fukukoa is a Japanese peasant, poet, intellectual, philosopher, revolutionary and, above all, wise. He has been close to nature for seventy years, asking who we are and who we should be in the future. He is the creator of natural agriculture and the "nendo dago", the clay balls we learned to make in the seed workshop during the Almond Tree Festival, with which he wants to turn deserts into forests. The idea that Masanobu follows is simple: there is nothing that exists in this world, therefore it follows the philosophy of NADA MU; doing nothing. According to him not even knowledge is useful. "If you use thought to separate red from black, you have learned to separate red from black, but nothing about red or black." So the only thing you have to do with yourself to "flourish" is simple: seeds and clay. And the same can be done with the earth. Actually, human beings, to obtain food and water, try to control the earth and in this control is when destruction occurs. The human being believes that he knows nature but all he has done is divide it. The problem is solved by looking at everything as a whole. When vegetation is destroyed, oxygen is reduced and oxygen is what allows us to sing and be happy. The best way to regain joy is to throw clay balls. When making a clay ball, according to Masanobu, what you put inside is not only a seed but your soul, and when you throw it, it is not only your hand but the hand of a God. So last Friday, in the forest, we not only dressed up as Gods. We were real Gods.