The pathe to number 9

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The path to number 9

The path to number 9 winds along the valley of the Turrite de Cava from the Piazza Nuova .Locally known as the piazza dopo lavoro, (after work) it offers a staging post for all the comings and goings of the village, as it is impossible to take anything but a very small vehicle beyond it.

There are no cars here, just the occasional three wheeled api, appropriately nicknamed from the bee, these Lambretta hybrids crawl laboriously up the hill. Heavily loaded with neatly cut fire wood, they pitch and role between the houses, before un-ceremoniously dumping their load in the street outside the appointed cellar. To the straniera (outsider) a log is a log, but the villagers of Cardoso are log connoisseurs and it is important that the correct choice is made. Cut from the local woods, there are large logs for the open fire, thin pieces for getting the fire started, Acacia wood which is hard and difficult to burn and beech wood which forms a round, smooth, easily handled log .Then there are the shorter pieces for the wood burning stoves.These stand unglamorously in the hallways of the village houses instilling the winter air with wafts of wood smoke, warmth and comfort.

Ever busy, when the apis are not plying wood, they buzz about with endless bags of sand and cement, tooing and froing from the piazza, where the road ends, to the ancient houses perched on the hill top above. Here, the houses are exposed to the extremities of mountain weather and are in constant need of repair. Occasionally, a large new purchase is made, a new refrigerator perhaps, or a new sofa. These too are loaded onto the api, then loosely secured, before roaring off in the midst of a cloud of two stroke engine smoke. A couple of helpers lurch behind to push on sharp corners and steep inclines, shouting instructions, as they go, to any one who will listen.

As the path, which is no more than 2 meters wide, passes between high walls holding back the mountain to one side, and a strawberry pink house with green shutters on the other, we catch our first glimpse of the valley stretching away to the west. A deep cavern, it is lined with deciduous trees which cling tenuously onto the steep limestone slopes through shallow earth, to assume a changing backdrop across the seasons .Another steep climb and we are enclosed between buildings. Built straight onto the rock of the mountains, their walls rise vertically above us, providing a dank, green refuge from the midday sun. These houses are empty, abandoned when the families of the village were fractured by poverty and widespread emigration. Now they form a part of the estate of distant cousins in Scotland, Ontario and Melbourne. Kinsfolk who rarely visit their crumbling inheritance, in a land whose language they do not understand .

Sometimes though, as we pass, we gain a glimpse of something else. A narrow, cobweb covered door, flush with the dull, damp wall is left ajar and deep in the dark cellar beyond, the traditional life of the contadini. (country people/small land owners)

In the centre of the cantina( cellar) a loan light bulb hangs, shining dimly over an even earth floor .In the corner and extending over much of the space stands an immaculately stacked wood pile. Every log is aligned with the other, their bright ends mirroring a treasured rack of wine. In contrast, the wine stands in 5 litre carboys, deep red, dust covered and in an array of bottles stacked on shelves and across the floor .All shapes and sizes, they are sealed with an assortment of tapes: masking , cello tape, insulation, any sticky substance that will keep the air out of the cherished current vintage, for it is unlikely to be stored for long .

Recent crops lay in baskets awaiting their fate: a cabbage for minestrone perhaps, enormous ugly tomatoes for slicing in salads, whilst their pear shaped cousins head for a jar of homemade passata. In autumn sliced porcini are laid out to dry in broad bottomed boxes stacked against sacks of freshly milled chestnut flour which has been harvested from the chestnut grove that marks the end of the valley.

Around the cool stone walls, rusty tools hang, an artefact of previous times when most of the work was done by hand. Now, there is a mechanical rotavator standing in the corner, a piece of equipment which will be shared with the other contadini when they join together to prepare the land next spring.
Then the valley will echo with the shouts of old friends and family renewing their relationship with nature as there forbears had done

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