i cycled and cycled and asked people if there was a way of following the coast to calabria without followin the superstrada 106, with its occasional squished single-lane shared with thundering lorries and other vrooming vehicles. i asked two other cyclists one morning and they told me to tuck in behind them and amazing how much wind friction is reduced there. they wore skintight clothing to reduce wind friction and ate little pieces of jelly for energy.
i had just crossed the bridge over the stream one morning and was preparing to set off for a day's cycling when two young men passed and said "ciao" before turning around and telling me that they were staying in an abandoned house up on the hill next to the old castle and if i wanted to spend a night or two with them i would be welcome. at that stage i was still full of plans of cycling to sicilia and climbing mount etna; as the days passed in their company that plan was happily postponed. first of all we went to laura's house to drink coffee and breakfast, and then to andrea's house for lunch. it was andrea who had lent them his adze and other agricultural implements.
it was a beautiful spot where they had began to settle. it was a half hour's walk from the coast road and surrounded by a field full of blue flowers with a horse at one end who brayed every half hour or so. fabrizio and fabrizio (as they were both called) were full of plans of living there and working the land and planting and living off the land. also collecting wild plants like wild asparagus, which grows all along the side of the paths. there was a nearby abandoned orange grove, which you have to scramble through the undergrowth to attain, where the orange trees are laden with orange fruit and they are delicious and sweet. there is so much opportunity for living off the land here in fertile sunny calabria, and occupying old houses which are lying abandoned all over the mountains. they had already done a lot of work on the house to make it habitable, and had an old wooden bookcase filled with a modest little library of books by Hesse, Nietzsche, Goethe, a novel by Italo Calvino, Henry Miller's novelistic autobiographical account and an old tattered copy of I Vagabondi del Dharma - an italian translation of the dharma bums.
however, robert the shepherd passed every day in his little white car and, besides his habitual ciao salutation, he began to really insist that it would be better if we pushed on before the owner turned up.
therefore fabrizio and i set off one day towards the mountains to look for another house.
there were so many of them, but the conditions of nearby water source, quite far from the road, unlikely to attract attention, roof intact and surrounding land cultivatable made it a special combination when they were all met. we followed the rocky bed of a river for a while, and when the land rose and the mountains began, we spotted a lonely looking property high up on the hillside with no obvious means of access. that was when we began to climb up a little path, which soon became lost in the prickly undergrowth, and i said to fabri "rarely have i met someone else with such a keenness to explore". our desire to attain that house was large but after an hour of slow progress through the scratchy bushes, it was fabrizio who declared, as he was crawling ahead, his body pressed close to the ground, that "it is too difficult to go on", and all we could do was laugh heartily at our state of discomfort and the ultimate unfeasibiliy of our self-chosen endeavour.
fabrizio loved to cook, over a fire outside the house as evening was falling, and more often than not it was pasta with tomato sauce, seasoned with the wild herbs he had found round about.
fabrizio, however, wasn't so fond of cooking, and found more delight in breaking up the hard earth with the adze under the sun.
therein began to grow a slight tension, for fabrizio had fair skin and always opted to avoid the midday sun. fabrizio said to me: "how can you choose to work the land if you don't like being in the sun?".
and one day - how do these things happen? - an argument broke out, and fabrizio swung his rucksack over his shoulder and headed off to look for another abandoned property closer to the coast, and look for some wage-earning work in a bar or restaurant, because nothing can one do without money.
perhaps it is because
"everything put together
sooner or later falls apart"
in any case later in the day fabri came back with danilo who has a car and we all crowded in and transported all the pots and cooking utensils to the other house. it was nice to be so close to the beach and the swim in the sea but it was also close to the road and the drone of vehicles, and my thoughts began to turn again to following the road to sicilia.
first of all fabrizio is keen for me to meet his friends pepe and rossella, an older couple who have spent all their lives looking after goats and sheep and a vineyard and making cheese and salsicio and wine and bread and selling them at the big market in reggio. "it is they who inspire me so much" fabrizio tells me, "to eat good food and to know where your food comes from is so important. you feel so healthy - in body and spirit - when you eat their food. you will see when you get there".
i had just crossed the bridge over the stream one morning and was preparing to set off for a day's cycling when two young men passed and said "ciao" before turning around and telling me that they were staying in an abandoned house up on the hill next to the old castle and if i wanted to spend a night or two with them i would be welcome. at that stage i was still full of plans of cycling to sicilia and climbing mount etna; as the days passed in their company that plan was happily postponed. first of all we went to laura's house to drink coffee and breakfast, and then to andrea's house for lunch. it was andrea who had lent them his adze and other agricultural implements.
it was a beautiful spot where they had began to settle. it was a half hour's walk from the coast road and surrounded by a field full of blue flowers with a horse at one end who brayed every half hour or so. fabrizio and fabrizio (as they were both called) were full of plans of living there and working the land and planting and living off the land. also collecting wild plants like wild asparagus, which grows all along the side of the paths. there was a nearby abandoned orange grove, which you have to scramble through the undergrowth to attain, where the orange trees are laden with orange fruit and they are delicious and sweet. there is so much opportunity for living off the land here in fertile sunny calabria, and occupying old houses which are lying abandoned all over the mountains. they had already done a lot of work on the house to make it habitable, and had an old wooden bookcase filled with a modest little library of books by Hesse, Nietzsche, Goethe, a novel by Italo Calvino, Henry Miller's novelistic autobiographical account and an old tattered copy of I Vagabondi del Dharma - an italian translation of the dharma bums.
however, robert the shepherd passed every day in his little white car and, besides his habitual ciao salutation, he began to really insist that it would be better if we pushed on before the owner turned up.
therefore fabrizio and i set off one day towards the mountains to look for another house.
there were so many of them, but the conditions of nearby water source, quite far from the road, unlikely to attract attention, roof intact and surrounding land cultivatable made it a special combination when they were all met. we followed the rocky bed of a river for a while, and when the land rose and the mountains began, we spotted a lonely looking property high up on the hillside with no obvious means of access. that was when we began to climb up a little path, which soon became lost in the prickly undergrowth, and i said to fabri "rarely have i met someone else with such a keenness to explore". our desire to attain that house was large but after an hour of slow progress through the scratchy bushes, it was fabrizio who declared, as he was crawling ahead, his body pressed close to the ground, that "it is too difficult to go on", and all we could do was laugh heartily at our state of discomfort and the ultimate unfeasibiliy of our self-chosen endeavour.
fabrizio loved to cook, over a fire outside the house as evening was falling, and more often than not it was pasta with tomato sauce, seasoned with the wild herbs he had found round about.
fabrizio, however, wasn't so fond of cooking, and found more delight in breaking up the hard earth with the adze under the sun.
therein began to grow a slight tension, for fabrizio had fair skin and always opted to avoid the midday sun. fabrizio said to me: "how can you choose to work the land if you don't like being in the sun?".
and one day - how do these things happen? - an argument broke out, and fabrizio swung his rucksack over his shoulder and headed off to look for another abandoned property closer to the coast, and look for some wage-earning work in a bar or restaurant, because nothing can one do without money.
perhaps it is because
"everything put together
sooner or later falls apart"
in any case later in the day fabri came back with danilo who has a car and we all crowded in and transported all the pots and cooking utensils to the other house. it was nice to be so close to the beach and the swim in the sea but it was also close to the road and the drone of vehicles, and my thoughts began to turn again to following the road to sicilia.
first of all fabrizio is keen for me to meet his friends pepe and rossella, an older couple who have spent all their lives looking after goats and sheep and a vineyard and making cheese and salsicio and wine and bread and selling them at the big market in reggio. "it is they who inspire me so much" fabrizio tells me, "to eat good food and to know where your food comes from is so important. you feel so healthy - in body and spirit - when you eat their food. you will see when you get there".
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