Although we had to adjust
to a more rudimentary way of life at Gabi, one thing that was richer than
anything I had experienced was the view of the land around us. While the babies
napped in the afternoon, I often sat with a cup of tea in our living room on
the second floor next to the window that overlooked the road and its
surroundings. I never tired of watching the changes in the weather and the way
they affected the landscape. From the sheets of rain across the horizon that
greeted our arrival, to the fog that often crept over the fields in all seasons,
to the bright sunshine that illuminated the distant snow-covered Alps in
winter, the view held me entranced.
In the center of this landscape a vital element stood
out: the one and only road that wound up the hill to Gabi. This ribbon of
gravel and mud that emerged from between two houses in the village below meandered
diagonally for a few hundred feet before it passed over a bridge at the river (Torrente
Stura). From the window, I couldn’t see the actual bridge, just the stand of trees
that grew around it. In fact the bridge was so small that the first time George
and I drove up to Gabi I almost missed it. Only the sudden transition from
gravel to smooth concrete beneath our tires made me look up and note this
dividing line between us and the outside world. A tributary of the mighty Po, the
river in summer was a mere trickle of water, but in winter it widened and
swelled with rain and melting snow, and violent currents swirled dangerously as
they passed close to the underside of the old bridge.
After it crossed the river, the road curved left, away
from the village, and climbed slowly towards Gabi. About halfway up, it
paralleled a rise in the land that signaled the beginning of the Marca fields.
On the far side, one of those fields rose sharply from the road in a tall green
bank, and on the near side Zio Remo’s vineyard dipped with the land in neat,
striped rows. During that first year, I watched the grape leaves in the
vineyard bud, then broaden and darken to a rich shade of green. As the grapes
fattened, the green of the leaves gave way to gold and red that shaded the side
of the road as it curved around the top of the vineyard, passed by the orchard,
then climbed towards the house.
In the first few weeks I couldn’t believe my luck. As
a little girl I had often fantasized about retiring as a rich old woman to a
large house on a hill, and I was living my fantasy while still in my twenties.
Even though George’s two uncles were the only other people living year-round at
Gabi, and the other seven houses were empty most of the time, I didn’t mind the
isolation. We had sought a refuge from the stress of modern life, and we had
found it. We wanted to reconnect with the natural world, and in many ways we
had. In the short time that we had lived in Italy, much had changed from our
former life. Instead of relying on packages of frozen produce, we bought fresh
and had planted vegetables in the garden; instead of cardboard-boxed and
paper-wrapped yellow cubes of butter, I made my own butter with the cream
skimmed from the milk that Zio Silvio delivered each morning; instead of the
thrum of large trucks rushing by our front door, we could hear wind rustle the
leaves of ancient trees. Asphalt and concrete had been replaced with gravel and
dirt, and television gave way to the view from our window. In those early days,
I felt smug in my belief that we were more enlightened than George's Italian
cousins, who had rejected farm life to live with their families in small
apartments in the crowded, noisy city of Torino. I was sure that they would
envy us when they saw how successful and happy we would be at Gabi. We would
work hard, but our lungs would be clean and our bodies healthy. We had chosen a
far better life for our children than they had for theirs.
However, there were some minor catches to “living the
dream.”
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