Amid the earthquake rubble, a journey becomes a comic strip.

(by Fabio Iuliano) Houses shored up, bars reopened between a thousand difficulties, valleys that open up after climbs vertical, squares emptied by silence. For 14 days and 257 kilometers the Roman cartoonist Valerio Barchi walked along the 'Path in the Changed Lands', the route that crosses the towns and cities devastated by the earthquake, from Fabriano to L'Aquila, two of the symbolic cities of the devastation. Tomorrow it will finally arrive in the capital Abruzzese, at the end of an experience destined to become comic in 2026, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the earthquake Central Italy. A sketchbook, the always-on Wikiloc app, and shoes worn out by the difference in altitude have accompanied the author in a itinerary that unites communities and towns damaged by the earthquakes. "When I walk I try not to have expectations - he says - I I let myself be surprised by landscapes and encounters. Then, little by little, the scenes come together and become history." Starting from Fabriano, the artist reached Castelluccio di Norcia, Arquata del Tronto, Accumoli and Amatrice, with an average twenty kilometers a day. Before entering L'Aquila, will pass through the hamlet of Collebrincioni, the last stop before the goal. He had also put the 'tools of the trade' in his backpack - the watercolours -, but already from the second stage he had to choose: "Either the drawings or the knee." The clutter has become feel, forcing him to give up and send the colors back to afterwards, limiting oneself to quick notes and sketches to be transformed into tables once he returned. Among the places that struck him there is also Amatrice, the city in the Rieti area that disappeared under the earthquakes of 2016. On one side the rubble still on the ground, on the other the strength of small communities and associations that keep the hope. "It's like embers under the ashes - he observes -, life that continues despite everything". The stops become moments of listening: in Matelica, Camerino, Norcia, reaching the hardest-hit areas of the Rieti province. Collected stories. without a script written in advance, but with the attention of those who walk to look and understand. "Eventually I'll have to find a thread conductor. Maybe he will arrive right at the last stage, entering in L'Aquila", he explains. Born in Rome in 1985, Barchi lived for fourteen years abroad: postman in Holland, waiter in Istanbul, artist in street in Taiwan. Back in Italy he chose watercolor as his medium. language to tell about travels. He has signed works such as 'Ginostra', 'Bona Via!', 'Fogarina', 'Fango' and 'Agata fuori le 'mura'. It's not the first time he's transformed a path into a comic strip: it had already happened with the Via Francigena, described in tables that they combined history, encounters and landscapes ('Bona Via!' precisely). This time the challenge linked to the Camino was born in a laboratory university dedicated to social planning, which already from the beginning he had put the memory of the communities at the centre earthquake victims. "I know little about the L'Aquila earthquake because at the time I was in India - admits Barchi -. I know about the Student House, of the collapses, of the basilica, but not of how the earthquake had marked daily life in the following years. I'm here for understand it". To look with your own eyes and draw with your own own fingers.