Chapter 20: Morning

I’m up on top of the ridge again. It’s morning. When I woke up a little after 8:00 the mist was still sitting in the valley and the sun had not yet broken over the ridge. The morning light was beautiful so I quickly jumped out of bed and got dressed, though by the time I was done, the sunlight had already hit Passano. But as I walked up the ridge I would very often be in shadow while the landscape all around me was finding the new sunlight. Sometimes the sun was just a glittering lamp between the black tree trunks. There was still frost on the ground in the shady areas. It melts fast where the sun hits. Little brown oak leaves rimmed with crystal ice lie just waiting for a poet to crunch them underfoot and immortalize them in lyric.

As I came to the top of the ridge and was walking along it, I stopped to take some pictures and got to listen to a sound I’m not sure I’ve heard before—frost melting. It was delicate and fabulous. I walked along the frost-hardened mud, the dampened grasses, and here I am at the top where if I listen really closely I can hear the last of the frost sinking into itself. The valley is sending little tendrils of mist creeping up the canyons. I can hear a rooster, a car, and the occasional whir of the chainsaws of the woodcutters who live up here. The tiny town below me looks quietly asleep, though I don’t think that illusion will change with the further arrival of the day. There is a helicopter somewhere.

I think it’s amazing how I can be here at what is probably the least attractive time of year possible, and yet it’s still so beautiful. Everything’s asleep for winter, but there’s still no crowning glory of snow. The leaves are brown and dried. The branches are bare. The flowers are invisible. The grass is yellow and tough. Abandoned snail shells are littered everywhere. And it’s still gorgeous. Man, I gotta come back in the spring time.

It’s actually amazing how much I can hear from up here, especially considering how little I know to be around me. Down in the village I can hear a dog barking, even down to his smaller whines. I can hear a door closing. I can now hear traffic from pretty much all directions, which is surprising. I’m sitting up a road that has exactly two neighbors who share it. On the other side are two villages which combined are about thirty houses, one tiny country road between the two of them. Down in the valley we have the bustling metropolises (not) of San Giustino, Citta’ di Castello, a couple other tiny townships, and Sansepolcro a little further on. None of these are a whole lot bigger than, say, your average Wal-Mart. Maybe there’s a highway over the western ridge.