Sicily 6/20/24
My intention was to take the forest path to the next village, except the dog was there again. When I first encountered it, with its owner, it tucked tail and ran off from me down the hill. But this time, it was alone and sitting about twenty feet off the road, some kind of mutt with German Shepherd in it.
The path goes through a large farm, with chickens, roosters, goats, countless olive and fruit trees, and terraced gardens. The owner is a very old, stooped woman, at least that’s who was with the dog last time. She spoke to me but I couldn’t understand her.
I turned around and went back through the forest, past my house, and got onto the strada provinciale that snakes its way down the mountain. Just as I was exiting the next village, which I look at every night and every morning from my window, a single road along a mountain ridge with a church at the end, a car pulls up. It’s none other than Giro, of course, with his wife, and a daughter, a granddaughter, and a niece in the back seat. There isn’t any room for me, but his wife, who isn’t a small woman, shifts into the middle of the front seat and insists that I squish myself in next to her, which I do, of course.
Once in town, I buy fruit and go to the beach, where I lay in the sun, make some acquaintances, dip in the water, for the next four hours.
Home is 5.4 miles and 2000 feet in elevation from where I am sitting at sea level. There is no bus, I’m not going to hitch-hike, nor ask anyone for help. It’s mid-afternoon, 90°F and I think that I’ll be just fine with 20 slices of bresaola, and no water.
I’m writing this from my rifugio, so you know that I made it home. My only regret was taking a shortcut through an olive grove which turned out to be incredibly steep and went on for a good twenty minutes before I could get back on the road, my heart pounding. As I came down the hill into my village, I was smiling irrepressibly. The back of my dress was soaked through and my face was the color of a tomato from the exertion, but I had made it.
It reminded me of hikes in the Alps when I was younger, where, at the end of the day you look down into the valley you started from and can’t quite believe that you got up so high on your own two feet.
I guess I’ll have to get used to it. My own two feet are my only way to get around here.