Chapter 19: Villages

Today Vanya and I went on a walk up the ridge. Nah, paths are for losers. When I say up the ridge, that’s exactly what I mean. Straight up the ridge. It was quite an adventure (it’s impressive how often I say that, is it not?). Had quite a fun time.

The view from the top was phenomenal. There was still mist sitting all through the valley, so from up there all the hills and peaks looked like islands jutting up out of a white puff of ocean. We could see a couple little towns over the other side of the ridge as well. One was probably ten houses, the other was maybe twenty-five. Very cute. We could see the one single winding dirt road which takes them down into town in the valley. It’s probably a two hour trip just to go to the grocery store, so they probably don’t, at least not often.

On the way down (we took the road this time) Vanya was telling me about the village and the family she stayed with in Mexico. Her village was maybe ten houses larger than the one we could see from here and many of the villagers had never even been to the next town. Each house had its own little shop, and that’s how the village ran itself. We were speculating that these little Italian villages might be similar to that.