It is one of the oldest forests of Sicily, one of the last natural woods of our beautiful island. The path we are going to describe starts from Montalbano Elicona, close to the megaliths of Argimusco upland. It leads to the “patriarchs” (i Patriarchi), the oldest oaks of the forest. We do not have precise information about their age, they should be between 200 and 300 years old. We leave the car in the area before the steep descent and then start the path through the woods. The oaks and other plants are so dense that direct sunlight hardly reaches the undergrowth. The younger trees grow extremely thin for years, just trying to get enough height to be able to absorb a bit of light from the sun: this is one of the wonders of a natural forest, the chance to see the struggle for life, even within the plant world. We pass a couple of small picnic areas and after about 2 km on a dirt road we get in the area of the patriarchs, the oldest and largest trees of the forest, some of them have a trunk circumference of approximately six meters.