Under the Chestnut Trees

First, a note of a sta­tis­ti­cal nature: as of Sun­day we are offi­cially halfway through our pil­grim­age, time-wise at least. 35 days down and 35 days to go!

Chi­avenna is a charmed place, and it wasn’t only Emanuela’s break­fast jam cake and the rain­bow con­nect­ing the moun­tain to the city that con­vinced us of this. We woke up yes­ter­day to a glo­ri­ous morn­ing and pro­ceeded to enjoy the most won­der­ful day of hik­ing of this whole pilgrimage.

We went south along the Per­corso Storico, the his­toric route up a lit­tle ways along the hill­side from a time when the lake and river were less pre­dictable and con­trol­lable. (Also, of course, there’s a very good chance that Luther fol­lowed this route for some dis­tance; we’re not quite sure where he hopped on the boat.) It threads its way through a for­est all of chest­nut trees—we saw signs adver­tis­ing var­i­ous events for the chest­nut fes­ti­vals through­out the region this week—a tree rarely seen in the U.S. due a blight some time ago. The green canopy over­head was lovely, as was the smell of the fallen leaves, but in some ways it reminded me of the apple tree for­est around the Tin Man in “The Wiz­ard of Oz” movie—namely, well-armed. While we never got clonked on the head with falling chest­nuts, their husks are hedgehog-sharp and thick, and we had not infre­quent stabs in the ankle. But inside the husk is the shiny brown nut, and just the words “chest­nut for­est” are so enchant­ing that we were will­ing to for­give a few slivers.

The local archi­tec­ture was also delight­ful. Not sur­pris­ingly, it’s mostly stone. The houses are built tall and wrapped around with mul­ti­level wooden bal­conies, all fac­ing the sun—I’m sure in this deep val­ley the peo­ple have learned how to soak up every bit of it. In one town we were admir­ing the crooked beams hold­ing up the stone-shingle roof (we had a good view of its over­hang from below) and a lady came out to offer some com­ments, in Ital­ian of course so we didn’t under­stand much besides “vec­chio,” old. I offered “bello,” beau­ti­ful, but she shrugged. As a pass­ing trav­eller I see beauty and charm in some­thing old and unlike any­thing I’ve seen before; she prob­a­bly sees poverty and the trou­ble of upkeep.

Quite to our sur­prise, all along the Per­corso Storico (very cleary marked and often lined with stone walls; we really appre­ci­ate that in a walk­ing path) there were aban­doned houses, with the same stone walls and shin­gles on top. Some were up away from any­thing in the for­est, but oth­ers were right in lit­tle vil­lages. They were ruins, essen­tially, though not as old as the Roman ruins more famous in Italy. I sup­pose liv­ing on top of ruins is a more nor­mal state of affairs for Ital­ians than any­thing I as an Amer­i­can can imag­ine. The con­trast between past and present was even more strongly rein­forced by the not-so-distant buzzing of a go-cart track in the val­ley below!

In the early after­noon pass­ing through another vil­lage we asked an old gent sit­ting out­side his house to fill up our water bot­tles for us. He not only did that but invited us to share a beer with him, so we did. We pre­pared our­selves for the chal­lenge of com­mu­ni­cat­ing in our nearly non-existent Ital­ian, but yet another level of chal­lenge was there: he lifted a ban­dana and showed us the hole in his throat where his voice­box used to be, due to smok­ing, as he could ges­tic­u­late with­out trou­ble. So, we passed the dura­tion of a bot­tle of beer with ges­tures and about five words of Ital­ian and a few more of Span­ish, and you know what? With good will and some effort you can do pretty well. He offered us a few per­fectly ripe toma­toes off his vine and then we were on our way again.

Back in the for­est we saw signs point­ing two ways to San Fedelino, one of our way­points; one direc­tion took an hour going up, and the other took only half an hour fol­low­ing the shore. Nat­u­rally we took the faster way, and arrived at the 10th cen­tury chapel com­mem­o­rat­ing a Roman sol­dier saint in short order; but then we dis­cov­ered that the lower-level trail peters out as a cliff shoots straight up out of the lake, so we had to climb back up to the top again. The first phase was a real scram­ble up a hill­side of huge tum­bled rocks, more like climb­ing insane stairs than walk­ing up a trail. When we did get to the trail it was about as ver­ti­cal as could be.

This prob­a­bly sounds oner­ous, but the truth is that noth­ing wore us both out as much, phys­i­cally and men­tally, as those two straight flat unvary­ing days along the Iller Canal; it was the only time I got seri­ous foot pain and felt like I was about to lose my mind from sheer tedium. Yesterday’s jour­ney was always inter­est­ing sim­ply in the phys­i­cal act of walk­ing, actu­ally engag­ing of the mind and chal­leng­ing to the body in reward­ing ways. And at the top of all this hard climb­ing was a truly spec­tac­u­lar view of lake and moun­tains, from the lit­tle vil­lages at the bot­tom to the snowy peaks at the top below a glo­ri­ous blue sky.

A lit­tle far­ther along the ridge, right before we dropped down again into Das­cio for the night, we found a lit­tle shrine to Mary and an altar set up over­look­ing the lake, so we said our evening prayers there. Grat­i­tude flowed out very naturally!