Okay, I know it has been a while, and I apologize for the delay. More on the reasons for it later. The last time I left off, I had finished working on the farm for 5 days, and had decided to walk for 2 days before coming back for the actual harvest.
Having come back after my two day stint, it was time to complete the harvest. We woke up at 6, and by 7 a group of University students had assembled in the brisk morning to carpool to the vineyard. A sleepy half hour later, we got out of the car, just as the fog was lifting from the vines. And so, without ceremony, we started to snip the grapes into crates, in groups of two.
I said all I wanted to say about this process before, so I will skip ahead here, only recounting our lunch, when we all sat around on crates and passed around a bottle of wine. This ritual, which surely has been closely followed for thousands of years, made me feel very alive, though afterward a little groggy, and certainly lazier.At the end of the second day, after working 24 hours in two days, I rode back to Viterbo with Giovanni, where we said our goodbyes and I thanked him for having housed and fed me these two days. Since he was from Salerno, further South on my route, I asked him to give me some tips, and went to get my notebook out of my backpack. It wasn't there. Swallowing hard, trying my best to avoid panic, I quickly raced through the events of the past few days, trying to picture the last time I saw it. I realized then that I had left it at the internet cafe 2 nights before, and immediately gave it up for lost. Three months of notes, contacts, stories, thoughts, everything had disappeared in one instant of foolish neglect.
Still, I'm an optimist, so I woke up early the next morning and briskly walked to the place I had left it, as if hurrying that morning would somehow save it. I arrived at 9:15, saw that the place opened at 0:30, and paced around the town of Viterbo for half an hour, all the while trying to exercise a stoic acceptance of the loss. The cafe was still closed at 9:45, so I went back to the apartment, packed up, ate breakfast, said my goodbyes, and resolved to go back once more before moving on with my life. This time it was open, and so I crept in, afraid to ask but determined to know, and before I could finish the question, the lady handed me my precious red journal, unmolested and glorious in its simplicity. I greedily thumbed through the pages, checking here and there for various little inserts, such as the four leaf clover I had received from Diana in Torino, and saw with great satisfaction that nothing was missing. So, showing profound and wide-eyed gratitude to the lady, I triumphantly marched to the bus stop, ready for the next chapter.
The bus took me back to Sutri, my last stopping point, and I was immediately greeted with a nice surprise: a very well-maintained amphitheater dating back to Rome. And the best part? I was the only one in it. For 15 minutes I wandered around this ancient ruin all by myself, hearing in the silence the chants of Roman spectators. There is little I find more thrilling than having a piece of ancient history to myself. I took a number of pictures, then headed back to the road, passing various Etruscan necropoli on my way. Great start to the walk, I thought.The rest of the walk was dreary in comparison, a particularly ugly stretch of the Via Francigena. I even found myself walking on the shoulder facing two lanes of traffic, and realized that the Via Francigena still has a long way to go. At the same time, I savored the fact that I was catching this trail before it became too commercialized. Always the trade off: do I want the authentic but sometimes disappointing current configuration, or the manicured and well-situated but lacking in soul configuration?
Well, this time I had no choice, so I proceeded down the Cassia to Campagnano di Roma, and directly to the Parochial Church. There I met Ester, a Spanish pilgrim and veteran of the long distance walk. Switching gears back to my now rusty Spanish, I was soon feeling very amateurish once I heard her recount some stories. She had covered the walk from Torino in less than half the time I did, with 12 pounds compared to my 40, walking 20-25 miles a day compared to my 12-17. She had also done the entire walk from Santiago di Compostela in the Northwest of Spain across the country, then across France to Torino, and was now finishing the trail on her third outing. She told me various stories and we compared experiences. I was sad to hear that she had not enjoyed her walk in Italy very much, saying that nobody really went out of their way to help her like they did in France or Spain. I was surprised at this, and wondered how it was possible that two people doing such a similar type of trip could have such different experiences.Almost as if to contradict her bold statement, a member of the church soon appeared with her dinner, piping hot and complete with fruit for dessert. Since he had not known of my arrival and had therefore not brought any for me, Ester graciously offered to share, adding food from her pack to make a full dinner. While we ate, she discussed her encounter with a term that has been lingering behind most of my stories, but which I had not yet fully grasped. This was the timely and consistent appearance of Providence for us walkers. How true her words, I thought. Every time I have needed shelter, food, a kind word, inspiration, and the safekeeping of my journal at a sketchy call center for three days, Providence has quietly taken care of everything for me. It seems that Ester was a bit more comfortable than I am to lean on it, but that did not detract from the profundity of her observation.
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