Marble Quarries and Not Much Else

First, a sta­tis­ti­cal note: we have been on the road 50 days now, and today is 10–10-10.

In the morn­ing Andrew, Zeke, and I walked through a silent La Spezia to the camper and then we all rode back to Sarzana. Jed, Andrew, and I headed off for our day’s walk a lit­tle after 9. We said our morn­ing prayers as usual, with the Sun­day bonus we’ve been hav­ing of each per­son offer­ing a one-minute homily on the Scrip­ture verse of the day, espe­cially appre­ci­ated now in a place where we can derive nei­ther lin­guis­tic nor sacra­men­tal ben­e­fit from pub­lic worship.

The scenery was as dull as the past week’s had been thrilling. (The prob­lem with high points is that you inevitably have to come down—which reminds me of the Trans­fig­u­ra­tion hymn that con­cludes: “How good, Lord, to be here, but we may not remain; So since you bid us leave the mount, come with us to the plain.”) It was semi-continuous vil­lages of no great charm, one blend­ing into the next with no dis­tin­guish­ing bor­ders, along sec­ondary roads and weedy verges. The sky was mostly over­cast and the weather was nei­ther hot nor cold. After awhile we turned off the main route for the alter­nate one along the beach; but once we got there we dis­cov­ered the path was actu­ally along the miracle-mile main drag, just out of sight of the sea, through even uglier beach towns—though I’ll give it this much credit, there was a side­walk the whole way.

The one sight of any inter­est was the rav­aged moun­tain­side. This region of Car­rara is home to the biggest mar­ble quar­ries in Italy, and you can see the evi­dence in what at first appears to be snow but is actu­ally the scars of quar­ry­ing on the rock faces of the Apuan Apen­nines. The per­ma­nence of these scars was par­tic­u­larly strik­ing to me. And the left­overs of mar­ble quar­ry­ing are appar­ently so plen­ti­ful that the curbs of the side­walks are lined with mar­ble! Chunks of mar­ble lit­ter the shore. On the plus side, it is from here that Michelan­gelo selected his stones for his sculp­tures. So does my friend Sarah Hempel Irani, a bril­liant sculp­tor herself.

And that’s pretty much it for the day. We found our hos­tel and checked it, met with the oth­ers in the camper, found a camp­ground for them, had some din­ner and retired early to get things done.

Since there isn’t much to say about today, I thought I’d throw in a bonus recipe. I came up with this way back in Ger­many when we were still cook­ing on a butane stove and needed some­thing healthy, fill­ing, and easy to find in the dis­count gro­cery stores that pep­per the Euro­pean coun­try­side, and when we had to carry our food awhile before cook­ing it so raw meat wasn’t an option. We’ve had it a num­ber of times in the past 7 weeks. It seems most fit­ting to call it

Pil­grims’ Veg­etable Stew

1 onion, diced
1 large egg­plant, chopped in small cubes
2 large toma­toes, cubed
1 large yel­low pep­per, chopped in small cubes
6 oz feta
basil or other fresh herbs
½ lb. short pasta, like penne or macaroni

Heat 1 Tbsp. of olive oil in a pot. Add the onions and egg­plant and cook over medium heat till they start to siz­zle, sprin­kle with a lit­tle salt, then cover and cook 7–10 min­utes or so till the egg­plant is quite soft. (When it has reached this point is a good time to put the pasta water on to boil.) Add the pep­pers and cook about 10 min­utes more with the lid on until every­thing is quite soft; mean­while cook the pasta. When the pasta’s done, drain it and serve with scoops of the stew on top, gar­nished with gen­er­ous quan­ti­ties of feta and herbs. Serves 2 hun­gry pil­grims, but prob­a­bly 4 peo­ple under nor­mal circumstances.