Moving to Italy: A Walk in the Woods

The story of our move to Italy starts with "Arrival" on the June 26, 2017 blog post.

One Saturday morning in late September, George and I went with the children for a walk in the woods. With the sun bearing down on us, and wearing the backpack carriers for the babies, we hiked into the hill behind the house. The sun had not yet penetrated the cool dampness under the arbor of trees and we shivered slightly, but it was a relief after the heat of the open road.  Paul and James skipped ahead while I stopped to take pictures that would not turn out very well.  I wanted to capture the image of our rustic, winding path through the woods. Dry leaves had tumbled to the ground—crimson, brown, gold, and umber. A recent rain shower had deepened their color, and flattened them into the dirt beneath our feet. Ahead of me on the trail, Margaret Ann and Matthew pulled on each of George’s hands as the slope increased and their walking slowed. I trudged after them. It had been a while since I’d pushed my body into nature, and in that while I’d gorged on Italian bread and cheese. My legs ached, and my breath came in short gasps, but through my discomfort I marveled at this beautiful patch of woods that until then had been hidden from me in the hills behind Gabi.

That morning, when we told my in-laws that we’d be hiking in the hills, Marino suggested we go to the small hillside chapel of San Michele. He said that it contained original artwork by the artist Giotto. I looked at him a little puzzled, and he was surprised that I'd never heard of him. I figured it must be some remote minor artist, not the renowned genius I was to encounter later in my Art History class. I was young and arrogant. I considered my in-laws old-fashioned and ignorant of the "real" world. And even more than that, I was fed up with having my in-laws dictate the details of my daily life. I desperately wanted to enjoy an outing alone with my family, and if there was a nice painting at the end, then I wouldn't mind seeing it.

When the incline steepened and the twins tired, George and I hoisted them into the carriers on our backs. As we continued the walk, I experienced a closeness to nature that I could not know while working in the kitchen at Gabi. We had come to Italy seeking, not only relief from a world gone crazy with politics and protest, but a reconnection to the earth. Every day, from my lookout at Gabi, I could watch the changes in the land around us: the river dwindling, the crops rising and greening, the long grass yellowing, and the leaves shading from green to gold to red. When we first arrived, I had been enthralled by the sight of the fog rolling around beneath us, revealing and obscuring familiar landmarks as it did. Each morning, I opened the windows, threw back the shutters, and breathed deeply of the earth. As the day wore on I could hear farm machinery compete with squawking roosters and clucking hens as they laid their eggs in Zio Remo’s barn. The sound of car engines, so much a background noise in our town in California, were in Italy an occasional interruption of the everyday sounds of farm life.  

As I walked with our children in the woods, I was immersed into the oneness that I had longed for. I was no longer just observing the changes from my house on the hill, but I could feel the warmth of the sun as it crept out from behind the clouds, and my feet sank into the cold dampness of the earth where rain-puddles had partially evaporated.  I held no illusion that we were breaking new ground. This was no wilderness. The woods were a mere pause in hundreds of years of cultivation. But I wasn’t looking for a complete rejection of the world, just a shedding of the excess that marked modern life. I wanted to reconstruct an elemental part of me that knew the earth, and for a little while I felt I had. It could not last; I knew that. Soon I would have to return to my kitchen and George to the clearing of brush, but while we were together in that moment, I was content.

James and Paul walked slower and started asking, "Are we there yet?" so we sat for a few moments on a tree stump to let them rest. The weather was not yet cold enough to send all of the birds south, and we could hear their songs in the trees. The one bird that I always listened for was the cuckoo. I had grown up with that sound in England, and it felt like a homecoming when I first heard it call out from the woods beyond the barn. I tried to get the children to listen closely, so that they could recognize the sound and perhaps form the same connection as I had.  They heard it, and then proceeded to chorus the call, filling the woods with their imitations and their giggles. So much for my wilderness moment!  

On the trail to San Michele. James in foreground, Paul and George in the background.

Some years later I tried a similar experiment in California. One early evening after a day's drive, we stopped our car at a country roadside to watch a deer grazing in the long, sweet grasses. We urged the children, five of them by then who ranged in age from 8 to 14, to get out of the car, to stand perfectly still, and to listen to the nightlife. We could hear a kind of rushing sound as the trees rustled in the evening breeze, then the silence vibrated around us. From above an owl started a gentle "Whoo, hooo. Whooo, hooo."  I whispered, "Listen. That's an owl. Can see him?" But instead of sharing my fascination, they found the whole thing creepy and dived back into the car, slamming the doors. I was left laughing sadly by the side of the road. My children, who watched television and movies where fictional heroes battled enemies from this world and outer space, were scared by the reality of profound quiet, interrupted by the simple call of a bird. I decided that it was probably the result of watching too many Halloween specials on television, but I regretted their loss of the simple intimacy of nature’s sounds.