It was rough waking up at 8:30 for the train to Scilla, but this was my last walk on the Italian mainland, and the natural excitement made it easier for me to find the energy to get out of bed. After a change in Villa S. Giovanni, I hopped a train for Scilla, struck up a conversation with the woman across from me (I’m not sure if I have changed, or if it’s just easier to talk to people, especially women, here), and in a few short minutes, found myself where I had left off yesterday evening.With a few parting glances at the town built on the protruding rock, I began this important stretch, only to run into Alessandro, one of Enzo’s friends, as he rode to Scilla on his bicycle. We both stopped to greet one another, and when he rode off, he promised to stop on his way back. So, thirty minutes later, Sandro dismounted, and walking in single file, we chatted for an hour or so.
Whether he wanted to or not, he had encountered me on a particularly contemplative day, which meant dispensing with the small talk and really getting down to the nitty-gritty. Sandro, a web designer / graphics artist, shared with me his dreams and aspirations, his thoughts on Reggio Calabria, and his desire to learn English and travel a few years. I shared with him many of my unfulfilled dreams, described the fulfilment process of this current dream (for how often are our dreams fulfilled?), and before I knew it, an hour had passed and it was time for him to bike home for lunch. Feeling as though we had covered a lot of friendship ground in just a bit more than three miles, I let him go, and continued on my own.
It had been a novel and delightful experience to be able to bounce ideas back and forth with such a gentle, intelligent, and sensitive person, but this next stretch was better undertaken alone, as it covered the last steps to the corner of the toe of the boot. Deciding that a protruding jetty was the furthest point I could reach, I stepped onto the pebbles and shells of the beach, climbed onto the huge cubical blocks of stone that formed the jetty, and walked out toward the looming form of Sicily, just a stone’s throw away. I could have swam this, I thought with a tinge of regret, but this moment was about victory and closure, not disappointment and emptiness, so I surveyed instead the long coastline of Calabria, and imagined the looming forms of mountains, the splendid beachs, and bustling hilltop towns of the past 1400+ miles. That was a lot of land to cover.
Still, this was not the end, not even of the day’s walk, so I did not find myself stripping naked, shrieking, and driving into the frigid waters of the strait of Messina. Maybe when I reach Trapani… Instead, I burned all of it into my memory: the wind, the fine mist heavy with salt, the color of my shoes against the rough stones, the colors of the many pebbles, the fisherman who kindly obliged my request for a few photographs , the fact that nature called forcefully at such an inopportune moment, Sicily and the water and the clouds, seagull screams and the bustle of maritime commerce, the sound of waves hitting the cavities between stones, and the faint smell of fish and algae.
What a satisfying feeling, and at the same time, how human it all was; here I was, having torn my way down the peninsula, only to find that the rest of the world was business as usual. In the distance, someone cleared his throat, another shouted an obscenity at his buddy, and I smiled with the realization that I could wait all my life for the fireworks celebration, reporters squabbling for the privilege of asking me the first question, a key to the city, and a four-day seafood banquet, and even if those things never came, still be perfectly content. This was between me and the land, and I had received all the fanfare I wanted.
So, sniffling a bit as I thought of all my friends, old and new, and my family, who had constantly supported me, I walked the rest of the way to Reggio Calabria.
What else can I say? I saw the Riace Bronze warriors, a pair of well-preserved statues I had previously regarded as unreachable (why would I ever go down to Reggio Calabria, I thought, in my naïveté), caught up with Enzo, went for a stroll down the Corso, and partied with him and the boys until 4:30, an hour later than the night before
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