Mondo Bizzarro (Salento Walk/Day 2)
Mondo Bizzarro [Day 2]
by Rudston Steward
ew things are more cartographically tempting than an isthmus: a narrow strip of land with the sea on either side of it. Whenever I map-read my gaze is inevitably drawn to such land bridges, wondering how best they might be traversed. The idea of hiking coast-to-coast and thereby linking up two seas, two distinct maritime cultures, is irresistible. Every isthmus is a walking safari just waiting to happen.
Look at a map and you’ll note that southern Italy is a land of temptation, a territory of isthmuses-writ-large. Below Naples the iconic Italian boot splits into the heel of Puglia, the raised arch of Basilicata, and the curving toe of Calabria (poised to drop-kick Sicily deep into the Algerian hinterland). Southern Italian coastlines are lapped by the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west, the Ionian Sea in the middle, and the Adriatic Sea to the east. This affords the mouth-watering prospect of a Grand Walking Tour: going coast-to-coast-to-coast across two regional isthmuses and three Mediterranean seas.
At the end of May we walked across the Salento isthmus in Puglia, three days from Gallipoli on the Ionian Sea to Otranto on the Adriatic. A cross-section of the heel of the boot of Italy.
Day 1 was surprising. We discovered that the Salento’s Ionian coast is a very odd place, a scrappy landscape dotted with architectural oddities and eccentric individuals. A veritable mondo bizzarro.
EVERY ISTHMUS IS A WALKING SAFARI JUST WAITING TO HAPPEN.
We set out early from Gallipoli. The contrast between the charm of the old city center, with its warren of narrow lanes and soaring Baroque cathedral, and the choking urban mess that surrounds it, is jarring. A man is being dragged along the Lungomare Galilei waterfront by his over-eager dog, past an interminable string of boarded-up fast-food shacks. It is not clear whether the shacks will open for lunch, or ever again. Opposite Paninomania, purveyor of seaside kebabs and crepes, a couple power-walks up a flight of stairs, curtly punching the air with their dumbbells.
We swim—a ritual salutation to the Ionian Sea we are about to leave behind—and then cut inland, onto a bridge over the highway, through a fence and diagonally across a field. Gradually the Ionian sprawl starts to subside in our wake.
The terrain is flat, a dusty plain of allotments criss-crossed by dirt roads flanked by stone walls and wire fencing. Every so often a house rises up from the plain with kitsch grandiloquence, towering fantasies of obscure design incongruously plonked down among the scraggly fields and olives. Many are unfinished, half-built faux-turrets climbing over driveways to nowhere, concrete archways whose matching courtyards remain unbuilt. It feels like we’re strolling through an architectural battlefield abruptly abandoned in the dead of night. A skirmish in which, evidently, both sides lost.
Some of the lanes have been used as rubbish dumps, augmenting the forlorn post-apocalyptic feel of the countryside. Clumps of rusty machinery and piles of rubber tyres lie strewn along the roadside at irregular intervals, like a trail of noxious breadcrumbs scattered by an eco-vandal. Was he hoping to retrace his steps in due course, out of this maze of pollution back to a more pristine, uncontaminated landscape?
After a picnic break in the shade of an olive grove just outside Matino we decide to stop for an espresso on our way through town. Knowing you can always count on a decent coffee is one of the great pleasures of walking in rural Italy. Even the smallest town on the periphery of nowhere has a lone bar to assuage your caffeine-withdrawal-fears.
The only open bar that lies on our chosen route through Matino is the Greenwood Resto-Pub. Special of the day: pasta with mussels (€6). We order a caffe shakerato and an espresso and walk through to the patio in the back, overlooking a stand of umbrella pines. There are wooden platforms built around every trunk, about 10 feet up in the air, and a series of ropes and suspended walkways linking one tree to the next. An elevated obstacle course of sorts, or displaced adventure park, strung up in the pines. It hasn’t seen much use of late, and it’s not clear precisely how it ended up in this bar’s back yard. Or why.
The coffees are served to us by Laura. She is keen to chat, asks us where we’re going, where we’re from. Her eyes are constantly amused, as if privy to an ocular inside joke, and she smiles easily, flashing slim white teeth between fulsome, tidy lips. Laura shows us her designer watches—one on each wrist—and lets us inspect her latest-generation electric cigarette devices. She has two, one black and one white, made by a company called “Smok.” Held in hand they are surprisingly heavy, compact and weighty as weapons. Laura clasps the black one in her fist, inhales theatrically, and spouts a cascade of dense white smoke from proudly pursed lips. It settles slowly on our table-top, enveloping the coffee cups like a bright, cherry-scented fog. She looks up, well satisfied, and says, “See that? Two thousand watts of pure smoking power!”
We pay up, say farewell to Laura. On the radio the Ramones are belting out “I just wanna walk right outta this world, I just wanna walk right outta this world.” An oddly appropriate soundtrack to today’s walk. The song is called Poisoned Heart—from the Ramones’ twelfth album, Mondo Bizzarro.
WE'RE STROLLING THROUGH AN ARCHITECTURAL BATTLEFIELD ABRUPTLY ABANDONED IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT. A SKIRMISH IN WHICH, EVIDENTLY, BOTH SIDES LOST.
On the outskirts of Matino a white sheepdog starts following us. He stays with us for a few hours, through olive grove after olive grove, across the plateau east of Matino, ignoring our attempts to shoo him back home. About a kilometer short of our destination the dog suddenly veers off the road, perpendicularly through the olives, and is gone. As if summoned by a covert canine call, indistinguishable to our human ears. Maybe he too wants to walk right outta his bizarre doggone world.
We are heading for a B&B called Casale Sombrino near the town of Supersano, the only accommodation option on offer tonight. The last two hours of the walk are flat and hot, straight narrow roads through singed grasslands, beige fields and stone walls crumbling with fatigue.
It’s a stretch scorched by the Xylella fastidiosa disease plagueing southern Puglia, an insect-borne bacteria threatening to decimate the entire region’s olive groves. No-one as yet knows how to combat it; last year an EU ordinance to cut down thousands of ancient trees resulted in dramatic footage of Puglian farmers facing down bulldozers to stop their olives from being uprooted. We walk past a number of groves with “Zona Avvelenata” warning signs strung up from the fences—Poisoned Area.
Just before reaching the B&B the road tilts briefly upwards. After traipsing along the flat for so long our calves are finally called into quickening action; the uphill change of pace and gradient is welcome. At the top of the hill a huge television lies abandoned in the road, a final broken monument to this degraded landscape. A last iconic vestige of the mondo bizzarro.
Then we are on the crest of the rise, below us Casale Sombrino’s attractive buildings and orderly estate are spread out along the flank of the hill. Beyond, stretching eastwards and down towards the distant Adriatic, the landscape is altered: greener, lusher, the olives groves better-kept. The belltowers of scattered village churches fleck the horizon. Tomorrow we will leave the weird world of the Ionian coast and make our way into the olive-green heart of the Salento interior.
A Neolithic turn in Puglia
A Neolithic turn in Puglia
by Rudston Steward
he Salento region in southern Puglia is still widely thought of—spuriously—as a one-dimensional travel destination. A lackadaisical beachy backwater at best suitable for a summer splash, but lacking the picturesque landscapes or cultural depth of the more popular and trendy Valle d’Itria further north.
While plotting the route of our nine-month Italian journey I’d been advised to skip the Salento until the summer. It all kicks off in June, they said, with the Republic Day long-weekend. Don’t bother coming in May. Everything will be shut down.
Naturally we ignored them—scribbling “PUGLIA” onto our May 2016 calendar in defiant and gleeful capital letters.
Driving south from Lecce in search of a campsite on 16 May turns out, at first, to be a less-than-gleeful undertaking. Most proprietors don’t even bother answering their phones; those who do simply laugh at our outrageous, unseasonal lodging requests.
On the coastal stretch from San Foca down to Otranto only one spot is open for business: a “Tourist Village.” Grudgingly we pull off the road to check it out. Such tourist villages are an odd, peculiarly Italian (and often quite hideous) phenomenon: tacky all-inclusive seaside resorts, mostly built in the concrete-crazy 1950s and 60s. Families flock to them in droves in July and August. Teams of “animatori” entertainers are perpetually on hand to amuse and distract the kids, while the parents slump in their deck chairs by the pool or on the beach to complain of the heat. In Italy they call such summer holidays “andare in villeggiatura”—literally to “go tourist villaging.”
This particular Tourist Village’s campsite, barren squares of gravel grid-slotted between hedges of laurel abutting the main road, is so thoroughly depressing that we get straight back in our car and drive on, further south. Beyond Otranto.
At Porto Badisco, twelve-odd kilometers south of Otranto, we chance upon the perfect Puglian campsite: a broad shady swathe of monumental umbrella pines set back from the sea, simple, clean facilities, just far enough from the main road. At night the stars are myriad lucid sky-studs; by day the place is utterly still, save for the breeze swooshing and swishing high in the pines, as if pouring from a resin-scented vent in the sky.
We can’t believe our luck: there is no-one else around. We have the run of the place.
Buoyed by renewed defiance and glee, we set up our tent, fold out our camping table, string up the hammocks. Open a bottle of Negroamaro. The setting is beguiling: on a promontory to the north, casting a watchful eye over the coast, stands the Torre Sant’Emiliano, a 16th Century stone tower. Through the pines snippets of coastline are visible, a footpath dwindles south between rocks and field. Around the headland it emerges at Porto Badisco’s cove: impeccable blue water, a strip of pale sand, and across the way a trattoria specializing in ricci di mare - fresh sea urchins.
Villeggiatura notwithstanding, we’ve somehow stumbled upon the pure Platonic ideal of a Puglian campsite.
WE'VE SOMEHOW STUMBLED UPON THE PURE PLATONIC IDEAL OF A PUGLIAN CAMPSITE.
That evening we discover we’ve also stumbled, unwittingly, onto the most remarkable collection of Neolithic cave paintings in Europe. It is quite literally under our feet, underground, in a series of interconnected caves, strung out along three corridors over nine hundred meters long: the Grotta dei Cervi (Cave of the Deer).
The Neolithic period marked our transition from a hunter-gatherer to a more settled agricultural society; for over three millennia, roughly 6,000 - 3,000 BCE, the Grotta dei Cervi served as a cult site and sanctuary for the Neolithic peoples then inhabiting these Salento plains. We know very little about these cave dwellers, what language they spoke, where they came from, what they looked like, what rituals they may have performed underground. The human bones and other artifacts from the Grotta dei Cervi have yet to be subjected to thorough contemporary analysis.
What we do know, undeniably, is that they left behind an astonishing artistic testament: over three thousand pictograms, painted in black bat guano and red ochre, lining the cave’s walls. The paintings are grouped into thematic clusters and “scenes,” some with remarkably complex arrangements that defy interpretation. Predominant among the images are hunting scenes, assorted stylized animals, male and female figures. But also bizarre human-animal combinations, men with horns, women with fish tails, what looks like an octopus-person, a clutch of possibly divine or semi-divine figures (one of these, dubbed “the shaman” has fast become the cave’s symbol).
A vast array of abstract geometric shapes accompany the figurative images. Some are applied with what we might today call artistic flair. Many are, to me, as strangely moving as they are unfathomably enigmatic. It comes as no surprise the that Grotta dei Cervi has been hailed as “the Sistine Chapel of the Neolithic.”
In her book Underground Religions, Ruth D. Whitehouse (following an earlier study by Paolo Graziosi) divides the Grotta dei Cervi abstractions into cruciforms, cymbal forms, sub-geometric figures, stelliform figures, S-figures, spirals, rosettes, and serpentine figures (see my photos of her diagrams above)—a fascinating analysis which, however, fails to shed much light on what all these pictograms may have meant to the folks who painted them around six thousand years ago.
BIZARRE HUMAN-ANIMAL COMBINATIONS, MEN WITH HORNS, WOMEN WITH FISH TAILS, WHAT LOOKS LIKE AN OCTOPUS-PERSON
Since their discovery on 1 February 1970, by a group of five speleologists from the nearby town of Maglie, the Grotta dei Cervi has been shrouded in controversy. Mired in bureaucratic limbo.
The collection of images on its walls are to the Neolithic period what the cave art of Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain are to the Paleolithic: a singular artistic trove of immense and irreplaceable value. And yet the Grotta dei Cervi site remains completely off-limits, invisible to visitors and essentially uncared-for. The massive economic potential of the site, which could conceivably drive a different sort of tourism for the entire Salento region if developed and managed properly, remains untapped.
For years plans have been mooted to seal up and protect the cave, and create an exact replica on an adjacent site, as at Lascaux and Altamira, so that the general public can at long last see and interact with the images directly. We could then attempt to discern the ineffable messages they may still transmit to us. But time and time again such plans have come to nought, stranded between a typically Italian political intransigence and perpetual bureaucratic impasse.
Our campsite is owned by Rocco Brescia. Rocco has two overriding passions: tango and horses. One afternoon he cranks up Carlos Gardel on the stereo in the restaurant and puts on an impromptu performance with a French tourist. Afterwards she sits down and says, face flushed: “He is so good, so controlled, very forceful.”
Rocco is six feet tall, still proud and strong as an ox. He shows us photos of his horses, of him jumping one through a burning hoop. In another he rides with unbuttoned shirt and shades, like a stocky Puglian emperor manqué. My favourite photo shows Rocco in wife-beater and gold chain astride the boot of his flash red car. Bona fide Bari numberplates. It’s the ‘70s platform clogs that really seal the deal — he looks like the coolest cat in all of Puglia.
We strike up a friendship of sorts during our stay, he is generous and helpful, invites us to dinner, picks us up when we need a lift after a hike. Rocco comes across as a man who has lived many lives, who has secrets. One night he says “I sold Gaddafi the metal he used to build his border fences, to keep the Egyptians out.”
ONE NIGHT HE SAYS "I SOLD GADDAFI THE METAL HE USED TO BUILD HIS BORDER FENCES, TO KEEP THE EGYPTIANS OUT."
Rocco owns all the land, from beyond the Torre Sant’Emiliano all the way to the cove at Porto Badisco. He thus owns the land above the Grotta dei Cervi, and the access to the caves, but not the caves themselves or their art—which by law belong to the Italian state. He is a key player in the negotiations about the future of the Grotta dei Cervi and the development of the site.
During our stay Rocco is often in conversation with his lawyers. It seems a historic new deal is about to be struck: a 3D virtual recreation of the Grotta dei Cervi and its art, to be installed as a permanent exhibition either in Otranto Castle, or on a part of Rocco’s land adjacent to the caves. Or maybe both. If all goes to plan—political intransigence and bureaucratic impasse notwithstanding—this 3D exhibit will be inaugurated before the end of 2016.
We end up camping at Porto Badisco for ten days. No other campers ever show up; presumably they are all waiting for the season to “kick off” in June, at which point they’ll descend on the campsite en masse in one foul fell swoop.
In the meantime the swathe of umbrella pines comes to feel like our private domain, like our home. We see no-one else, so we start forgetting that other people exist at all. We run around naked, bang our drums in the dead of night, holler at the full moon, sway in our hammocks, swing from the trees with impunity.
Our behavior is taking a decidedly Neolithic turn.
THE BREEZE POURS FROM A RESIN-SCENTED VENT IN THE NIGHT SKY. I CROSS THE THRESHOLD AND THEN CLIMB DOWN INTO THE DARK, FAR UNDERGROUND.
At night I dream that I leave our tent and walk through the pines to the entrance of the Grotta. The stars are lucid studs, the breeze pours from a resin-scented vent in the night sky. I cross the threshold and then climb down into the dark, far underground. The corridor levels and lowers, now I must navigate it on all fours. Then it widens, a dimly lit chamber lined with stalagmites. A pool of water, stepping stones. On the far side is a black mound, low to the ground and viscous. I press my fingers into it, slowly, coating my hand, then flatten my palm and fingers against the wall above. I impress my handprint, cast a sign into the recess of time; to where I rest my head thousands of years away on the pillow in my tent, just a few meters away, overhead.
The Ballarò babble
The Ballarò babble
by Rudston Steward
he street vendors of Ballarò speak a distinct market-language: incantations and incitements and implorations, slung dismissively into the morning air like cutoffs flung from a butcher’s block. A covert language, deeply shrouded in Palermitano slang, utterly inscrutable to outsiders.
Ostensibly, as with any street market, the vendors are there to sell their goods, to court potential customers, to outsmart and undersell each other. But, as I stroll through Ballarò, tuning in to its language, winding my way between the bellowing market-criers, I realize they are not, in fact, addressing me at all: their dialogue is with each other.
They grunt and cajole and riff, call out from stall to stall. They snigger and holler at wisecracks across the way, conversing both literally and figuratively over the heads of the steady stream of veggie-bagging punters. The sale of produce is almost an afterthought, a by-product, a sideshow to the main event: linguistic bravura, musical diction, cutting delivery.
Ballarò is equal parts poetry slam and griot gathering. And, as you’ll gather from the soundbite above, you can even buy bananas for a buck a kilo...
The cave artist of Filicudi
The cave artist of Filicudi
by Rudston Steward
don’t believe in love anymore, Marina Klemente says, as I settle into her couch. She pours two cups of tea and laughs disarmingly. “I’ve been living is this cave for almost 25 years.”
I’m not sure precisely how or whether the two phrases are connected.
I sit low to the ground in the dining room, the domed antechamber of her cave-home. In a nook beside the front door is the kitchen, a bonsai assemblage of stacked appliances and kitchenware. An arch at the back leads into her bedroom, three rows of books line an alcove. Sunlight shimmers on the whitewashed ceiling, shadowed ripples refracting across the uneven stucco. It’s cosy in here, an intimate space—the other cave, further up the hill over our heads, is much larger and serves as her studio and gallery.
In the ten years since we first met Marina’s appearance has remained unchanged: neat, shoulder-length hair framing wry eyes, compact cheeks tugging at the corners of a secretive set of lips. Her short frame is held upright, as if propped up by her steady stream of self-deprecating humor. Her hands are weighty, burdened by the constant urge to make things. She mostly keeps them in her pockets when there are visitors around.
I ask her to recount the story of how she ended up being a cave artist in Filicudi:
When I was eighteen, in 1977, I took my first trip away from home alone, to Alicudi. My father didn’t approve, he said ‘I’m not giving you a single cent’. In the 70’s the Aeolians were unknown, you couldn’t rent a house because everything was abandoned. I camped in an old ruin. There were many of us dotted around, some built informal little shacks.
I’d spent all my money on the ferry, so I begged the fishermen to let me help clean their nets. They rewarded me with a bit of fish. Later they let me help pull up their nets, and in due course I learned the tricks of the fishing trade. That’s how I got through the first summer.
HER HANDS ARE WEIGHTY, BURDENED BY THE CONSTANT URGE TO MAKE THINGS. SHE MOSTLY KEEPS THEM IN HER POCKETS WHEN THERE ARE VISITORS AROUND.
I returned that way four summers in a row, until in 1980 everything changed. There was a water shortage, the campers started protesting the lack of services. It was a right mess, confrontation with the locals, a pizzeria was ransacked. Eventually the Carabinieri came and rounded everyone up, expelled all the kids. From that day free camping was banned throughout the Aeolian Islands. So the older campers, the ones with money, started buying up ruins instead, and renovating them. That’s how the building boom started.
I stayed away for many years, I was living in Rome. To me Rome is the great sewer of Italy, where all the shit floats to the surface. I hated it, I thought I was going to die; so I moved back in 1992, to Filicudi. Others had started living in caves here, they paved the way for me. But many of them have left, and I’m still here.
The greatest hardship I’ve had to endure here is solitude. In the beginning my relationships with the Filicudaro locals were difficult. At the same time I didn’t fit in with the international community that settled here, they had a different lifestyle. It was tough for me, and sometimes still is.
I’ve always survived by selling my art. But it’s gotten much more difficult in the last few years. Italy is rotten these days, the institutions don’t work, everything is corrupt. People are apathetic, pathetic. I would leave If I could, leave this country, this cave, this island.
I ask Marina where she’d go—where in the world could one possibly go after living for 25 years in this luminous cavernous wondrous troglodytic Aeolian shrine?
She laughs her disarming laugh: “Either Malta or New Zealand.”
On top of the mythical world (Salina Walk/Day 5)
On top of the mythical world
[Day 5]
by Rudston Steward
he Aeolian Islands are liminal terrain. They inhabit the murky threshold where myth overlaps with history, reality coalesces into fantasy.
The historians of antiquity invariably identified this Sicilian archipelago with the “floating island” of Aeolia described by Homer in Book X of the Odyssey. The home of Aeolus, lord and keeper of the winds. Mythical Scylla and Charybdis were thought to be the Strait of Messina separating Sicily from mainland Italy (indeed, the modern Italian town of Scilla today faces Stromboli from the Calabrian coast). It was here on this archipelago, they concluded, that the gracious host Aeolus presented Odysseus with the four winds, to speed his homeward journey (with deplorable, if unintended, consequences).
Aeolus himself is a nebulous figure. Multiple versions of his lineage have been handed down to us, confused and conflated. He is at times said to be human, the son of a certain Hippotes, at others divine, sometimes descended directly from the god Poseidon (whose name in antiquity was Poseidon Hippios). In Homer Aeolus falls somewhere in between, more than a mere mortal but not a god as such. In later accounts, Aeolus is identified as a 12th Century BC Greek king who escapes the ravages of the Trojan War, sails to the archipelago via Apulia to resettle his people, and in time endows the islands with his name.
As I set out from Malfa, on the third and last day of my circumambulation of Salina, I ponder the above and wonder whether I should make some sort of offering to Aeolus today. Something symbolic to appease and thank him for the spectacular walk I’m completing. After all, I’m on my way up to the highest point of his archipelago; I should petition for favorable winds at the top.
WE HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO LIAISE WITH THE ANCIENT DEITIES. THE SERVERS CONNECTING US TO THE GODS OF WIND AND THUNDER AND RISING SEA-LEVELS ARE DOWN, AND NOT COMING ONLINE AGAIN ANYTIME SOON.
At the summit, almost 970m above sea level, it can get pretty nasty if a cold tramontana wind from the north starts howling. I need to keep the keeper of winds on my side.
But what would an appropriate offering be in this day and age? We have forgotten how to liaise with the ancient deities. The servers connecting us to the gods of wind and thunder and rising sea-levels are down, and not coming online again anytime soon. Odysseus would no doubt have slaughtered a few lambs, sheep fat would be sizzling in the honorific bonfires. But there are no handy ovines tucked away in my backpack this morning, so I stroll out of Malfa town, past the public library, up and away through the terraces, empty handed.
Soon I am laboring up the steep gradient of Monte Rivi’s northern slope. Idle musing about sacrificial Homeric lambs is soon swept from my mind by the determination with which the track wiggles under pines and squirms up and around knots of sweet chestnut trees. It is making me sweat. There is no wind; sweltering calm reigns.
Towards the top, the approach angles along a drivable track. A series of shallow folds progress up to the lip of Monte Fossa delle Felci’s wooded crater. The soporific final ascent lulls me into a quasi-mesmeric state. Not even the premonition of a breeze troubles the immaculate boughs of the trees. The mountaintop is being held in an eerie vacuum. Like the stifling silence of the lambs before flint sparks the kindling.
LIKE THE STIFLING SILENCE OF THE LAMBS BEFORE THE FLINT SPARKS THE KINDLING.
Now there is something sleeping in the middle of the road, just before the summit. Perhaps a small dog. As I approach it neither gets up nor raises its head. There is no breath of air that might stir it. I walk towards it, I’m close enough now and I see it is not lying in the road: it is dead. Not a dog. A rabbit.
A neat offering perfectly laid out in the dirt.
For whom, by whom? How did it die, or rather who killed it and placed it on my path? I can’t help but feel responsible somehow, as if the rabbit is compensation for the oblation I failed to make before setting out this morning.
Standing on the archipelago’s highest point my altimeter reads 967m. To the east is the Calabrian coast, narrowing towards Scilla and Charybdis. To the south lies the Sicilian shore, with distant Etna a gargantuan smoke-stack for Hephaestus’ forges. To the west lie the islands of Alicudi and Filicudi—which the ancients called Ericusa and Phoenicusa. To the north there is only open sea, from where throaty gusts of tramontana wind are just now mounting a furious assault. Lambasting the top of the Aeolian world.
Much later, when I’d scrambled all the way down the volcano’s crumbling eastern flank to Santa Marina, dived into the Tyrrhenian Sea, and eaten an exonerative pistachio granita from Alfredo’s bar in Lingua for good measure, I kept asking myself: was the rabbit really there?
A volcano a day keeps Aeolus at bay (Salina Walk/Day 3)
A volcano a day keeps Aeolus at bay
[Day 3]
by Rudston Steward
fundamental tenet of my walking philosophy is this: whenever possible, start your hike at sea level and walk up to the top of a mountain. In due course walk down the other side, all the way back to the sea. When you get to the water, jump into it. Swim, soak, drip dry. Repeat—as soon, and often, as possible.
It’s a formula that I adhere to any time the opportunity presents itself. As it happens, today and tomorrow—the second and third days of my Salina hike—afford an opportunity to double the dose: two twin-peaked volcanos on two successive days. Today (picking up where I left off yesterday) from Pollara to the top of Monte dei Porri and down the other side to Malfa on the coast; tomorrow from Malfa to the summit of Monte Fossa delle Felci and back down the other side to Santa Marina. Both rounded off with swims at Punta Scario (today) and Lingua (tomorrow).
I am feeling quite philosophical about the prospect.
The trail from Pollara ascends Monte dei Porri’s northern slope. It’s a path walked much less frequently than those that head up Monte Fossa delle Felci, because the latter is the slightly higher peak, so everyone opts to climb it instead. They’re after the bragging rights earned by making it to the highest point in the Aeolian Islands. But the summit of Monte dei Porri is, in fact, more spectacular than its eminent twin’s. The vegetation is lower, visibility is far superior. On top of Porri, if the weather holds, you get a mind-glowingly spectacular 360 degree panoramic. And the feel of the place, once you settle in up there, is somehow more contemplative and more illuminating than the partially-obscured summit at Fossa delle Felci.
AT FIRST ONLY ALICUDI AND FILICUDI ARE VISIBLE, GNOSTIC GUARDIANS OF THE DISTANT WESTERN FRONT. THEY SLIDE SLOWLY OUT OF SIGHT, STEP BY STEP, AS I ARABESQUE UP AND AROUND PORRI'S CONE.
Today’s hike unfolds like a dance. As I gain height from the sea level start at Pollara, the six islands that lie scattered in couplets around Salina appear and disappear in rhythmic sequence. A seductive game of hide and seek. At first only Filicudi and Alicudi are visible, gnostic guardians of the distant western front. They slide slowly out of sight, step by step, as I arabesque up and around Porri’s cone. Stromboli’s squat isosceles and the flattened fishy form of Panarea float into view on the ethereal north-eastern horizon. But they too soon exit stage left. Onwards and upwards I go, until, quite abruptly, gravitas-green Lipari and the amber lump of Vulcano rear into foreshortened view. Beyond, further south, the outline of the Sicilian mainland is a pallid filigree.
Just before I reach the summit, in a small dip crowded over with strawberry trees, visibility drops and the islands evaporate. I press on through the foliage, a final upsurge, to emerge onto the apex. The wayward beauty of the Aeolian design is revealed: six archipelagoed sisters arranged around central Salina like sentinels. A rough three-pointed star cast into the rippled sheen of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
This is why I walk up mountains: to remind myself of my place in the world.
Into the island wild (Salina Walk/Day 2)
Into the Island Wild [Day 2]
by Rudston Steward
henever I disembark on an island two contradictory impulses take hold of me: a desire to climb to its highest point, and, at the same time, an irrepressible urge to circumambulate it on foot.
The Aeolian Island of Salina presents a special case of this dilemma, as it has twin peaks of virtually equal height, Monte Fossa delle Felci (965m) and Monte dei Porri (860m). The idea of climbing one and not the other seemed to me an unreasonable prospect; they are quite different mountains, two perfectly conical and perfectly alluring volcanoes both ripe for the picking. So I found a reasonable solution: a 3-day hike around the island’s circumference (clockwise from Rinella round to Santa Marina and Lingua), walking up both peaks along the way.
Rinella is Salina’s secondary port, a calm far cry from the bustle of Santa Marina’s constant activity. In April the quiet is interrupted only by an occasional hydrofoil, and the splutter of Ape three-wheelers careening up and down the switchbacks to the port.
A fisherman sees me lacing up my walking boots, asks where I’m going, and offers me nespole (medlars) from his tree. His tassled grey beard has engulfed his mouth and cheeks in a fuzzy bear-hug, it’s much wider than his face. I pick half a dozen fruits and set off up the lane behind the port.
HILLSIDES OF YELLOW BROOM FLARE ACROSS RUST-COLOURED VOLCANIC SCORIA. THE PUMICE-LIKE GRAVEL SCATTERS AND CRUNCHES UNDERFOOT LIKE CRACKLING.
From the top of the town cobbles zigzag steeply through terraces of wild olives hemmed in by prickly pears, up to the town of Leni—seat of one of Salina’s three municipalities. It has a stark, proud church to prove it. At the Bar Chiofalo on the main drag the proprietor serves me an espresso dark and acrid as soot.
A contour path heads north-west from Leni, around the base of the Monte dei Porri. It goes into the island wild: the remotest flank of Salina, dramatic gorges and cliffs accessible only on foot. Gradually olives and terraces give way to lentisk, heather, cistus, artemisia, euphorbia. Hillsides of yellow broom flare across rust-coloured volcanic scoria. The pumice-like gravel scatters and crunches underfoot like crackling.
The place names on the map unfurl as word-poems on the tongue: Vallespina, Pian del Vescovo, Vallone Borrello, Praiola. And, finally, Filo di Branda: a russet-hued crag plunging vertically into the sea. The path veers hard right straight up to the saddle at Pizzo Corvo.
Here is the domain of the Falco Regina, Eleonora’s Falcon. It migrates eight thousand kilometers back and forth from Madagascar every year to nest on these cliffs. I watch a pair of falcons cutting and swooping into the gorge, until they dissolve into the shimmer of the sea below. They fill me with a longing for Madagascar, where I have never been. Islands can do that: they beckon to you from across the seas, calling out in their secret insular language.
ISLANDS CAN DO THAT: THEY BECKON TO YOU FROM ACROSS THE SEAS, CALLING OUT IN THEIR SECRET INSULAR LANGUAGE.
Across the saddle the path plunges down through quite distinct vegetation. The northern slope is wetter, more lush. Low maquis is replaced by strawberry trees, pines, clusters of chestnut. The descent follows the lips of two craters: first that of Pizzo Corvo, born of the earliest volcanic activity on the island 430,000 years ago, and then the collapsed caldera of Pollara—formed during Salina’s most recent eruption—which crumbled into the sea 13,000 years ago.
I re-emerge from the island wild, dropping past plantations of capers and fields of budding wheat, through the hamlet of Pollara, past the fisherman’s caves that line the waterfront cliffs and finally down to the water. Then I dive into the sea, all the while thinking of those Eleanora’s Falcons, yearning to learn their secret insular language.
Have Wetsuit, Will Travel
Have Wetsuit, Will Travel
by Rudston Steward
pril is the cruellest month—unless you have a wetsuit.
Here in Sicily spring is exploding; the island is ablaze with euphorbia, broom, lentisk, wild thyme and lavender. A green revolution has taken root, nature is running amok. This is a spectacular time to be outdoors, the azure sea beckons alluringly at the foot of every flower-bedecked hillside. The urge to dive into the water is irresistible.
And yet in Italy no one swims in April, the water is still too cold; many hold off until July and August before taking the plunge. Why wait until peak summer season to swim, when the beaches are overcrowded? When every inch of coastline gets colonized by phalanxes of deck chairs, the prime sunbathing spots staked out and defended tooth-and-nail against predatory fellow holiday-makers?
On Italian beaches during the summer months cliches and caricatures abound: hirsute middle-aged men strutting their stuff in skintight Speedos, while oiled-up women parade their pouting botox along strips of sweltering Mediterranean sand.
HIRSUTE MIDDLE-AGED MEN STRUTTING THEIR STUFF IN SKINTIGHT SPEEDOS, WHILE OILED-UP WOMEN PARADE THEIR POUTING BOTOX ALONG STRIPS OF SWELTERING MEDITERRANEAN SAND.
Thankfully there is an alternative: change your travel dates, and pack your wetsuit. A wetsuit represents freedom. It liberates you from the constraints of the peak summer season, setting you free to swim anywhere, anytime. Particularly during those spectacular months of early spring and late autumn when no-one else goes to the beach.
On April 7 we kickstarted our 2016 swimming odyssey, in the bay of Pollara on the Aeolian Island of Salina. The water was cold, but indeed comfortable in a wetsuit once the initial brisk contact subsided. It was a starkly beautiful sunny afternoon, there was no-one else on the beach or in the water. Only a large polpo (octopus) clung awhile to the seabed and then squirmed away with tentacles churning—as if caught off-guard by our unseasonal incursion into its pristine private depths.
Our plan for the nine months ahead — call it our Pelagic Mission — is to swim our way around the Italian peninsula from April through December, using our wetsuits if and when necessary. We’ve adopted a new mantra: “Have wetsuit, will travel…”
D is for Departure
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…