D is for Departure

by Rudston Steward

pril 4th is our D-Day. We are counting down.

A dozen days to go before we hit the road. And they’re shaping up to be a dirty dozen: packing, unpacking, repacking. Taking leave of our people and places and things.

Departure is unsettling. A disruptive melancholy, soon eclipsed by the immediacy of the journey—but leaving a trace on the tongue, the residual taste of what’s been left behind, unspoken.

Departure is both a release from and a search for home.

“No man can wander in fact without a base. You have to have a sort of magic circle to which you belong. It’s not necessarily where you were born or where you were brought up. It’s somewhere you identify with, to which you always happen to go back.” (B. Chatwin)

The place I always go back to—the place I’m taking leave of on April 4th and will return to in December—is the Maremma region of Tuscany, pictured above.

Twelve days and counting down…