Back to the Past - Leaving Siena

Okay, back to the past, so I can catch up with my walk and get us to my current location, Rome.

Last episode in the saga was the Siena romance. For details, see the past blogs below.

9/13 Siena to Cascina di Murlo - 14.6 sad and lonely miles trudged in the pouring rain

Franka and Julchen left on the bus at 10:38 (on time, for once, when I least wanted it to be), and I was weighed down heavily by their departure. Even now I marvel at how two days can take me from a happy-go-lucky self-sufficiency to a feeling of helplessness and loss. Ever since my sister, swelling with her brand new middle school wisdom, taught me about Pathetic Fallacy while I was still a tyke in elementary school, I have always remembered the term with fondness when it applied to the situation in which I found myself. Well, I got it in spades, giant droplets soaking me to the bone as I lamented diverging paths and the inexorable march of time. So, with the rain coming down in windy sheets, I slogged my way out of Siena.

Walking in the rain is one of those things that looks romantic from your dry, air-conditioned seat in the movie theater. In real life, it's a big old mess, cold and sopping wet. Even with all my rain gear, which performed remarkably well, there was no escaping hours of driving rain hitting and soaking my hands and face, and by degrees, my feet.

I did the best I could: I put on a playlist perfect for my mood, and when I was ready to move on from my pint of Ben & Jerry's moment, I started the Odyssey. And so I walked, for a few rainy hours, all the way to Cascina di Murlo.

But here, where I need it most, I had a zen moment. Ready? On a regular stretch of the walk, I looked to my right, and saw spread out before me a magnificent landscape, of the type I had only dreamed about seeing after drooling over so many paintings. I stopped, only two miles or so from my destination, and took it all in. It was here that the most important part of my trip came to me, in a flood of emotion.

Thank you. Thank you. I am grateful for every day, for the rain, for the romance, and the loneliness, and this view, and for seeing even now that this too shall pass. I am sorry - for my pride, for all too easily falling into the hero role in my frequent imaginings, for negative and disdainful thoughts about others that pop up despite my vigilant efforts to subdue them, and most of all, for forgetting to say thank you at every opportunity. And finally, how fortunate I am, setting for myself a dream, a crazy plan with abstract goals, and having everything work out so magically and favorably, and with such universal support and care. Thank you.

Now, why do I share this so openly, putting it on the web for eternal archival? I'm not sure. But I find it important for me to memorialize these thoughts as they occurred to me at that point in my journey, and to share them with you. Cynics, go ahead and take your shots. I leave a lot open for you to snicker about, but even having read this and thought about it for many days, the message remains.

Returning to the mundane... I lifted the wet backpack to my shoulders, adjusted the straps for the millionth time, winced as I put on the soaking, cold gloves, and walked up the hill the other two miles, all the way to the campground.

I set up the tent on the soaking wet ground, lay out my soaking clothes as best I could in the cold, damp tent, and crouched under a tree until dinnertime. At dinner, I met the Brasilian restaurant employees, chatted a bit, and went to bed with the sound of rain pattering on my tent in thick, wet drops. Thank you!