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(from my June 4th journal entry)
It's amazing how everything changes as soon as you cross the border. There's no mistaking that this is Italy, and it's far more than hearing another language or seeing the red-tiled roofs. It may seem fantastic, but I believe that each country I've been to has - how can I describe it? - an attitude, a personality, a feeling, ingrained in the very land. Italy struck me immediately with its warmth, even before I got off the train. It feels as though I've entered the land of perpetual summer, a land generous, lively, and strong. If I wanted to spend weeks just absorbing sun and local culture, I think this is where I'd plant myself. Already it's as if my whole life has been lived in black and white and here I'm seeing colours for the first time. The vibrancy of the treed hills, blue lakes, and sunny houses is like finally meeting a friend you've only ever written to.
Do things grow only more beautiful the farther we go on? My old life is slipping away from me like a dry and useless skin; new blood is rushing through my veins. The clouds in this sky are alive; the trees reach out with joy. I won't even think about going home.
(from my June 5th journal entry)
"The smells of the forest were beyond all that he had ever concieved. To say that they made him feel hungry and thirsty would be misleading; almost, they created a new kind of hunger and thirst, a longing that seemed to flow over from the body into the soul and which was heaven to feel. Again and again he stood still, clinging to some branch to steady himself, and breathed it all in, as if breathing had become a kind of ritual." - C.S. Lewis
Smell has always been the least acute of my senses, but now I'm beginning to wonder if I've simply been suffering from olfactory boredom. Today we hiked the Cinque Terre ("Five Villages") - Riomaggiore (our home base for three nights) to Manarola to Corniglia to Vernazza to Monterossa. We passed through steep vineyards, along shaded streams, between groves of twisted, silver-leafed olive trees, and past trees bearing the most fantastic, vibrant flowers and lemons twice as large as those at home. It was a feast for the eyes, but what struck me most were the smells. The air was wild, sweet, and spicy; fragrant, exotic, and deep. There were the scents of blossoms and salt and earth, all heightened by the occasional rain, but all mysteriously blended, indescribably complex and exhilirating.
Italy is like one of those dreams that feel more real than reality - when you wake, life seems to be missing something, yet you can't ever say what. It's like... a story becoming true. Home is true, we know; home is real in every way, but places like Italy are stories, fantasy lands that bring us pasta and leather shoes, countries that our ugly salmon-stuccoed houses are only pretending to belong to. Here, it's obviously real, and more sensually real than home, yet dreamlike too, because for so long it's existed only as a dream.
We hiked along paths as narrow as spaghetti, over a suspension bridge and an old stone arch, and up and down ridiculous numbers of stairs - up to green terraced cliffs with the bright, Medditerannean-blue sea crashing far beneath; down to paintbox-coloured houses that sent up the smell of good food from a distance. We bought hearty pandolce bread for breakfast in Manarola, climbed all the hundreds of stairs up to Corniglia, sat in Vernazza's harbour eating warm foccacia for lunch, and swam refreshingly in the sea at sandy Monterossa (about the temperature of Durrance lake). We took the train back to Riomaggiore and I had my first-ever gelato - delicious! Italy is a dream come true...
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anonymous
non-member comment
It sounds as though you could do this for years and never tire of it! I envy your freedom to go and see the things I also have always dreamed of seeing. Your exquisite writing is bringing it all to life. Happy trails!