RadioProfile | the discoverer

There are names that are almost a synonym for anonymity; but this sir His name was Severino Lucarelli, for many “the discoverer”, and I relax in these lines to talk about someone who is no longer here, but who perhaps, imbued with the resonance (the euphony) with which he was baptized, produced his small feat, unknown until today. For now, his life was a remarkable instance. He died just two months shy of his 100th birthday; a century of celebrating the simple fact of being alive. “Vito”, as the intimates called him, took care to congratulate himself on that circumstance.

His permanent passion was the great spaces, the prairies, the mighty rivers, the simple admiration of the sea from his habitual observatory, in the nose of the port of Mar del Plata. Of course, this liturgy had to link it with some related activity, and Severino was a born fisherman, from his cradle. He patiently completed the inevitable escalation from the cork, hook and string, to the ritual line 8, Fenwick and Medalist of fly fishing, the pinnacle of this ancient art.

It remains to decipher the nickname of “discoverer”; and it is that Vito did not limit himself to taking advantage of the infinite spaces of the southern mountain range: when the roads were still no more than imagined paths between the mountains, he had already frequented hitherto unknown corners. Thus, in a constant series, he was one of the pioneers in the mouth of the Chimehuín; later he was in the Correntoso, the “river of 100 meters”, of Villa La Angostura. In all cases, when a fishing boat was transformed into an appointment that cannot be postponed for the fans, he preferred to move away, and set out to look for other and new nooks and crannies… Because in that he was inflexible. Like many other lovers of solitude and reading the river, with no other company than that of the wind and the birds, he kept changing places and looking for other similar but unknown ones, while he was able to hold the rod and put on his waders.

-Oh Yes. I was there years ago; Now I don’t go anymore because that’s always full of people- he told me, sometimes pensive and melancholic, due to the loss of another slightly secret place, although that “full of people” corresponded to two or three canyoneers who had arrived by chance up there.

Thus, when I told him about the Rivadavia river and the eponymous lake in Los Alerces, and I named it as a true “trout farm”, he limited himself to saying:

-Yeah. It was a very promising place.

And this was about thirty years ago or a little more.

He had, it is fair to say, a certain scale in the qualification of his relationships. She avoided sharing experiences with what they called the “talkers.” that they could not escape the eagerness of pride and vanity for large catches and that, therefore, they did not hesitate in those with all details the access to a fishing boat “to tire the arm”, as he used to say.

This attitude is common among practitioners of outdoor life. It is not entirely questionable or harmful, since many gratuitous moments depend on oral tradition, and that is a way for people to find out. But Vito was too particular to accept it. It should be said that he never fully adhered to the regulations and that, although he was a respectful admirer of his treasures, he did not stop delighting his palate with what his waters once gave him.

He also helped me on occasions to accompany him to and then places that were a bit “thumbed around”, and I verified that the “fishing” rite was completed with culinary work. All his mastery in handling the fillet knife; the preparation of the fire between the stones; the fork made of a fork and the large cookie as a plate. He always wore a Pamplona boot, with some seasoned wine in the pella of the secular container. The last time he was in Corcovado, south of Esquel. He had already exceeded 80 and was taken there, to spend two or three days in a little cabin, very close to the mouth of Lake Wintter. Years later I returned to the place, and only then he began to be deservedly famous for the size of the fish.

Although my friend maintained his energy and enthusiasm, to the extent of traveling alone and doing his shopping without company, until the last days of his existence, he stopped, instead, going to his secret places with some advance notice, if we take into account his longevity.

When he left it, he declared that one had no more faith to walk a stony shore. Even that fortitude is worthy of being publicized, born from his virile ethics, of “not causing trouble to anyone”, as he himself explained it.

I am sure that many sites discovered by him, went back to the secret and never announced. And for the record that some are in areas visited by the, each year, a larger contingent of fishermen who come to enjoy the “country of the Fontinalis”.

Sometimes he told me that half of his vacation was spent walking along the shores of the lakes, on foot, without haste, and especially at the mouths of the streams. He took away the secret of the “rich” mouths and the “poor” mouths, as he used to call them without, of course, never indicating the exact place. In any case, as befits any good discoverer, he knew that sooner or later, someone would follow his steps to that chosen site; and that I then had to abandon him, to joyfully and laboriously resume the search for him. A search that, I am sure, must have continued through the unknown paths of the afterlife.

Text by Rodolfo Perri.

by Juan Ferrari