A Calabro-Greek Trance (Aspromonte walk/Day 4)
A Calabro-Greek Trance
[Day 4]
by Rudston Steward
eople have been speaking Greek in Calabria for almost three thousand years, since the first colonies of what would come to be called Magna Graecia were established on its southern shores in the 8th Century BCE. Greek language and culture got a major boost from the 6th Century AD onwards—promoted by the Eastern Roman Emperor in Byzantium, keen to undermine his Latinate rival in Rome against whom he fought interminable wars. The Norman conquest of Reggio Calabria in 1059 finally put an end to Hellenic fortunes, kick-starting the slow decline of Greek civilization, still ongoing a thousand years later. And yet if you know where to look—in small isolated pockets such as the one we hike through over four days on our Aspromonte Safari—a distinct Greek-Calabrian identity is still very much alive and kicking in the region to this day.
Walking into the town of Galliciano on Day 4 of the trip—having crossed the knuckle-white boulders of the Amendolea river and scrambled up the flaxen Aspromonte foothills, their slopes dotted with broom and wild olives—is like landing out-of-the-blue on a parched Aegean hillside. The road signs are in Greek; kids shriek and tease each other in Greek; the church is Greek Orthodox; even the flags are Greek. The trattoria where we have lunch is a Greek taverna in disguise, complete with accordion-brandishing waiters and Calabro-Greek dances.
ON THE ROAD, ON FOOT, IN AN OVERLOOKED VILLAGE HANGING OFF A REMOTE MOUNTAINSIDE IN CALABRIA, THE SIGNAL COMES THROUGH CLEAR AS A SIREN’S SONG
I can never tell whether it’s because of the post-prandial pirouetting, the Greek Orthodox chanting wafting over from the church, or perhaps just the taverna’s pungent red wine, but our afternoon’s hike back to Amendolea inevitably feels like walking in a Calabro-Greek trance. Rather than retrace our steps we drop down steeply to the fiumara riverbed and then boulder-hop downstream. It’s an elemental landscape of stark contrasts: a wide white expanse of boulders, framed by pewter-dark hills, parched and brooding, under an impeccable cerulean sky. A glistening streak surges among the boulders: the river etching its jagged line into the bleached valley. We pass through a vale of oleanders, the crimson flowers gleaming like gaudy nuggets in a ghostly seam of white bedrock. Further on a cow sits in the sand, turning its head slowly as we trudge past, unflappable as a Stoic philosopher. When we finally step onto the shady terrace back at Ugo’s agriturismo in Amendolea it’s like coming down to earth, returning to Italy from some sort of otherworldly journey.
Sometimes travel opens up a window through which stories jettisoned in time come streaming back into the present. After all, places are composite, mysterious things: they contain myriad echoes, multitudinous histories, the murmur of untold peoples past, the shiver of spent dreams still trembling underfoot. It can be difficult to perceive—this murmur of ancient tongues, the whispered substratum of cultures upon which we daily tread—as we go about our busy modern lives at home. But on the road, on foot, in an overlooked village hanging off a remote mountainside in Calabria, the signal comes through clear as a siren’s song: and so you walk on, ears-opening, white-boulder-hopping, under a burnished Byzantine-blue sky—in a Calabro-Greek trance.
For Whom the Goat Bell Tolls (Aspromonte walk/Day 3)
For Whom the Goat Bell Tolls
[Day 3]
by Rudston Steward
alabrians have about as many words for goat as the Inuit—according to that popular urban legend, whose veracity I have not yet had the opportunity to ascertain in person, on Baffin Island, say, or in northern Siberia—have for snow. There’s a poster in the museum in Bova, the capital of Calabria’s Aspromonte Grecanica region, listing dozens of goaty Greco-Calabrian terms, and to my untrained ear they sound like invocations: O tragopuddho (a young billy goat); to rifi ozzopodi (a young goat that gets separated from the flock); asti tripimeno (a goat with a hole in its ear). A goat bell can be either a cambana, cuduni, cudhuneddho or cudunaci; not to be confused with enan ximerinaci (a bell worn by a small goat) or, god forbid, enan mpecurinaci—a bell worn by a lamb.
There are parts of Calabria that feel as far removed from the hugger-mugger of modern life as an Arctic ice floe. On Day 3 of our Aspromonte Safari we walk from the town of Bova, up on its hill, to the hamlet of Amendolea, a cluster of houses strung out along its eponymous river (called a fiumara) far below. The fiumara is a broad boulevard of bone-white boulders, curling and cornering from the high Aspromonte mountains all the way to the Ionian Sea. For most of the year it runs almost dry, but occasionally swells with winter flooding, frothing riverine thunder as the boulders rumble and roil downstream.
THERE ARE PARTS OF CALABRIA THAT FEEL AS FAR REMOVED FROM THE HUGGER-MUGGER OF MODERN LIFE AS AN ARCTIC ICE FLOE
We never see people on the walk to Amendolea, but there are goats aplenty, an occasional raptor, and sometimes cows. Once we came across a dead sheep strung up in a tree by a local farmer, apparently to keep it from the wolves. Halfway down the hill we stop for lunch at an abandoned monastery, where the goats inevitably try to hustle a share of our panini. So I come prepared to defend our picnic with impassioned Greco-Calabrian invocations—having memorized a few key phrases in the museum. Needless to say, in the manner of unflappable Calabrian goats, they ignore this wannabe goatherd completely.
In Amendolea we stay at Ugo’s Agriturismo, lording it from his shady terrace over the lush citrus groves laid out along the fiumara below. Ugo is a master-craftsman, the bergamot-whisperer: bergamot is the most valuable and sought-after citrus in the world, and grows only along this narrow coastal strip of southern Calabria and bits of Sicily across the strait. Its essential oil is a key secret ingredient in perfumes and fragrances, which means that major global perfume houses often come a knockin’ at Ugo’s door. To gain access they must first pass muster with Pasqualino—Ugo’s formidable donkey. And he can be very picky.
Before settling down to the leisurely Calabrian feast Ugo lays out on the terrace for our dinner, we first work up a commensurate appetite by climbing the hill behind town, up to the ruins of Amendolea’s castle. Built in the 11th Century to defend the border between the territories of Reggio Calabria and Locri, the castle was abandoned after the devastating earthquake of 1783. The surrounding hamlet, on a plateau below the ramparts, was inhabited right up until the catastrophic floods of 1953.
ONE IS FOREVER SUSPENDED BETWEEN BEAUTY AND RUINS, MYSTERY AND DECAY, WHILE LIFE FLOWS ON UNFLAPPABLE AS A FIUMARA
Today the ruins are the domain of goats and occasional madcap travellers who’ve somehow stumbled upon this fascinating forgotten corner of Italy. The tinkle of cambanas and cudhuneddhos provides a bucolic soundtrack as the sun sets behind the Aspromonte foothills sloping away towards the Ionian coast. The impassive goats don’t seem at all troubled by the stunning views as they graze between collapsed walls and cracked facades. In bergamot-infused southern Calabria one is forever suspended between beauty and ruins, mystery and decay, while life flows on unflappable as a fiumara.
Roghudi: flickers of humanity (Aspromonte walk/Day 2)
Roghudi: Flickers of Humanity
[Day 2]
by Rudston Steward
hat endures when a place that’s been lived in for centuries is abandoned, what traces get left behind? Do flickers of humanity linger on, echoing through time, murmuring to passers-by from cracks in the walls? Where do the memories gather or go?
Roghudi was a thriving village until 1972, when a series of floods prompted the Calabrian authorities to declare it uninhabitable and move the population to a prefabricated new town on the coast. The old town’s position is dramatic, strung out on a spur that juts into the Amendolea river-bed like the hull of a precipitous ship poised to crash onto the boulders below. The arid flanks of the Aspromonte mountains abut it on all sides, the houses floating like flecks of flotsam adrift in a maelstrom of rock and water, clinging to the slope.
We walk down the main street—a thoroughfare of ruins—past crumpled buildings with blasted windows. Piles of rubble tilt and slump into the corners of rooms dotted with the remnants of forgotten lives: a faded photo, scorched white; empty wine bottles smothered in dust; a tattered scarf sprouting weeds. Small alleyways branch off the main drag, arteries clogged with debris and dreams and ghosts. I venture down a couple but have to turn back. No entry, no exit. At the bottom we emerge on the edge of the steep ridge, the view opens up, magnificent and heartbreaking. The fiumara river-bed is knuckle-white below, streaking away between dark hillsides like a bleached vein of boulders. Its calcified capillaries seem to sap the abandoned town of its collective memory: life draining away downstream, seeping irreversibly into the future.
LIFE DRAINING AWAY DOWNSTREAM, SEEPING IRREVERSIBLY INTO THE FUTURE
A path zigzags down to the river-bed. From below Roghudi looks like an embattled outgrowth of mortar and concrete, slowly being reabsorbed into the crest of the ridge it still straddles. I carry a small part of the town’s sadness with me as we walk on, a sliver of melancholia slipped into my backpack. The stark beauty of the terrain we’re traversing is tempered by a sense of loss, the surrounding landscape feels somehow altered by the ghost town anchored to its river-bed. It’s as if the elements have had to absorb the sadness, all the sadness that had nowhere left to go when the people were evacuated. The hillsides bear silent witness to stories that will no longer be told.
It’s a six-hour hike to Bova, climbing in stages from the river-bed up onto a high ridge. The fiumara’s whiteness gradually fades to a distant grey far below, now striated with sparkling seams of water. We follow a narrow footpath looping up to a saddle, it dips in and out of scrub and broom, the grass is pale and flaxen. Roghudi has disappeared behind us, into the past. The path becomes rocky and bare; where devoid of vegetation the ground emits a carbonaceous smell, as if the topsoil has been singed to crusty charcoal by the sun. From the saddle we drop into the next valley, across a spur. Bova emerges into view below. Beyond it stretches the lucid ribbon of the Ionian Sea, like a sustained blue note.
When we finally get there, the town of Bova is very much alive: one of its patron saints is being celebrated tonight. Over the course of the evening the melancholy in my backpack, carried all the way from Roghudi, starts lifting. As if reanimating: flickers of humanity sparking back to life. The sparks are everywhere—I indulge the fantasy that fragments of Roghudi, washed away in the floods and lost at sea since 1972, are finally making landfall on Bova’s shores.
Flickers in the lusty blast of the band’s trumpets. Flickers in the hushed flurry of the pitter-pattering procession. In the arch of the men’s backs as they heave and angle their Madonna through a church doorway. In the tannic bite of crimson wine.
Flickers in the dreams kept alive and the stories still afloat—stranded here in Bova on the island of the present, in a thrumming Calabrian piazza.
Go tell it on the bitter mountain
Go tell it on the bitter mountain
by Rudston Steward
ew places in Italy have such a spectacularly bad reputation. The very name is forbidding: Aspromonte, the bitter mountain. I’d been warned—don’t go there, under any circumstances. They will kidnap you, feed you to their pigs. The Calabrians are dangerous, a scheming and surly lot, they don’t even speak Italian. Everyone, it seemed, remembered in gory detail some kidnapping carried out by the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta mafia back in the 80s, playing out on the notorious slopes of the rugged Aspromonte.
Have you actually been there, I’d ask? No, but…
Travel is empowering: there is no better way of setting the record straight than going to see a place for yourself. Sometimes it turns out to be exactly as described, stereotypical to the point of self-parody. But sometimes it’s so different you suffer a kind of psychogeographical shock—cognitive travelling dissonance—struggling to reconcile your experience with your preconceptions. Either way, the point is there’s no short cut, no alternative to going there in person—poking about, walking around, following your nose, shooting the breeze with the locals. Walking is the ultimate antidote to so-called fake news: footfall is immune to spin and bullshit.
What I found in the Aspromonte is this: it is one of the most hospitable and generous places in Italy. In the month I spent exploring the region I never managed to pay for a coffee—someone had invariably already done so for me when I went to settle up. There were endless invitations to lunch and dinner after chance encounters with random strangers, who then welcomed me into their homes like a prodigal son. Every few days it seemed a goat was being slaughtered here or a sheep roasted there, drinking and singing ensued and I, a total stranger, was enthusiastically implored to enter the fray.
WALKING IS THE ULTIMATE ANTIDOTE TO SO-CALLED FAKE NEWS: FOOTFALL IS IMMUNE TO SPIN AND BULLSHIT
I discovered also that the Aspromonte Grecanica—the southernmost tip of the toe of Italy, south-east of Reggio Calabria—is a remarkable landscape, unlike anywhere else in Italy. The southern slope of the Aspromonte massif is dry, the vegetation gnarled and feisty, clutching at the precarious topsoil as if readying itself for a lashing from the elements. In summer the pale ochre sand is daubed with brittle-blonde grass, vivid smears of lentisk and scribbles of desiccated broom: an arid north-African palette that seems to have snuck across the Mediterranean undetected from the High Atlas mountains, or from some lost corner of Mauritania perhaps. Heat settles comfortably into the folds of the Aspromonte hillsides like a fat cat into fur, refusing to budge, or stop purring languidly, until sundown.
The Grecanic area is cut through by the fiumara (dry riverbed) of the Amendolea River. From its source on the Montalto, the Aspromonte’s highest peak to the north, an awesome bed of white boulders surges towards the coast, ever wider and whiter as it drops, like a swirling white playing field set between soaring grandstands of cliff and forest. The fiumara is skeleton-white, as if the mountain has expired and collapsed into the valley, its splayed spine of boulders picked clean by the scirocco wind: craggy lifeblood draining away into the Ionian Sea.
I learned that, indeed, the Calabrians here don’t speak Italian—they speak Greek. The smattering of towns clustered around Bova preserves the last vestiges of a Greek community descended directly from the western Byzantine Empire of the 6th Century AD, and harking back to Magna Graecia, the earliest Greek settlements on the Italian peninsula over a thousand years earlier. Theirs is an astonishing cultural history, a tale of the slow erosion of Calabro-Greek identity over thousands of years, countered by the tenacious defence of ancient Greek linguistic roots in this tiny, insular, regional backwater of modern southern Italy.
There was only one thing to do: I had to go see for myself, see more of the Aspromonte Grecanica. I had to poke about, walk around, follow my nose, shoot the breeze—in Greek. So I embarked on a four day hike along the Amendolea fiumara: from the abandoned village of Roghudi, via Bova and Amendolea town, down (and into) to the Ionian Sea. I was not kidnapped. I was not fed to anyone’s pigs; I’ll be writing about the walk and posting it here soon. I’m gonna go tell it on the bitter mountain and set the Calabrian record straight…
A Grand Calabrian Canyon (Sila Walk/Day 7)
A Grand Calabrian Canyon [Day 7]
by Rudston Steward
e had hiked for five days straight across the Sila plateau, immersed in its ancient forests. The abrupt change of scenery that came next, on Day 6, was shocking: a showstopping descent into the arid canyons of the Valli Cupe.
I’d never heard of the Valli Cupe before. What an odd name, I thought—the Gloomy Valleys. It sounded ominous, and a bit dull. I steeled myself for disappointment—the splendor of the five walks thus far, ensconced in our canopy of green, was bound to end sooner or later. We’d had a great run.
I fortified myself with multiple rounds of espresso, and took heart from the solid hunk of capocollo (cured pork shoulder) I’d seen our guide Francesco slip into his backpack for our lunch. Then we were off, across Sersale’s piazza, down the main street. On the outskirts of town a track branched off towards Monte Crozze, rounding its flank to a saddle. Views opened up towards the coast: a palette of colours shading from emerald velvet green—the Sila forest above and behind us—to the tuffaceous pink of rocky hillsides sloping away below, and, approaching the sea, a salt-and-pepper patchwork of ochre fields and olive greys. Lengthways, slicing diagonally across our landscape-canvas, ran a series of deep narrow gashes, geomorphic scars sunken into the earth: the gloomy valleys, in the flesh.
We scrambled over a lip and down into a dry stream-bed. It started out as a shallow valley, the upper reaches of its flanks wooded and green, holm oak interspersed with macchia scrub. But as we dropped further the bed got narrower, the walls steeper. The vegetation morphed as we entered a distinct and self-contained biotope. Ferns now clung to the slopes, a fuzz of pale grass dangled in clumps from strata of sand and gravel.
I WAS BEING SUCKED GRADUALLY DOWN A VAST MEGALITHIC CHUTE, PULLED AHEAD BY SOME FATAL ROCKY ATTRACTION.
The sides of the gorge rose almost vertically above us, so that the light reflecting down became murky and refracted. I could hear the patter of my footfall on rock echoing overhead, scurrying upwards. It felt like I was being sucked gradually down a vast megalithic chute, pulled ahead by some fatal rocky attraction.
The final, climactic stretch of canyon narrowed to just a few meters wide, the track now gritty underfoot, with sheer cliff-faces twisting up and away on either side. Sunlight insinuated itself into the gap above, reflecting off the striations of rock and sediment, taking on a mineral radiance as it bounced its way down. At the bottom we basked in its stunning geological glow.
I walked entranced, humbled by the unexpected magnificence of this Grand Calabrian Canyon.
Then we emerged, abruptly. The gorge opened up, cliffs falling away to a gentler gradient, the track widening onto a flat riverbed. We stopped under a eucalyptus tree to devour our capocollo, deftly carved up by Francesco, and continued on, uphill again, through scorching fields towards the town of Cropani.
I didn’t say much the rest of the way. The canyon trance stayed with me, all the way to Cropani and beyond. And I’ve been actively plotting my return to the Valli Cupe ever since - it is one of the most remarkable places I’ve had the good fortune of stumbling upon (or, in this case, of stumbling down, rapt in a geological trance) on my Italian Odyssey thus far.
In the Realm of Conifers (Sila Walk/Day 6)
In the Realm of Conifers [Day 6]
by Rudston Steward
he fifth day of our Sila hike was a one-way street, going downhill fast. From Buturo, 1,539 meters above sea level, we dropped eight hundred meters to the town of Sersale.
On the way down we passed through a succession of distinct forests: bands of different tree species each occupying a specific altitude range. Over the full arc of the day’s walk the Sila appeared not as a single unified empire, but as a multitude of discrete forest dominions stacked vertically, like great green layers in an arboreal wedding cake.
Our guide Carmine was in his element: as we descended he held court on each tree species in turn, illuminating its role in the complex ecosystem of the Sila. We couldn’t have asked for a better fellow traveller: Carmine is the author of a definitive guidebook on Calabrian plants, including the tree species of the Sila (“Ethnobotany: Calabrian plants and popular culture.”) We were walking to his hometown today; we’d be his guests in Sersale tonight, and meet his family.
LIKE GREAT GREEN LAYERS IN AN ARBOREAL WEDDING CAKE.
At the top of the sylvan food-chain is the beech tree (Fagus Sylvatica,) occurring above 1,400m on the upper flanks of the higher peaks. The ash of beech trees, Carmine recounted, is used in the preparation of a traditional local dish called cicerchia alla cenere, where the cicerchie, a local legume, are soaked with beech ash for three days before being cooked.
Below beech comes white fir: the Abete bianca in Italian (Abies Alba), a species prized for its rapid growth rate. “Since the 1950s fourteen north European countries have been using fir seeds from the Sila for reforestation, because our Calabrian variety is resistant to acid rain. Germany, Denmark, France, Norway, all of them,” Carmine tells us.
By mid-morning we entered the heartland of the realm of conifers: the Calabrian pine, Pinus Laricio Poiret. It is the most diffuse species of the upper Sila, the forest’s most symbolic tree, occupying a broad band of terrain above 1000m. These pines were used to build the fleets of the Greek and Roman Empires in antiquity, and their resin employed to seal the ships. “The Sila produces the best pine resin in the world,” Carmine quoted the geographer Strabo with proud satisfaction.
The trail ran alongside a stream, crashing downwards in a series of cascades frothing into pewter-dark pools. We clambered down the steep bank to plunge into the Cascata delle Ninfe (Cascade of Nymphs): an intense and deeply gratifying shock of cold.
A SERIES OF CASCADES FROTHING INTO PEWTER-DARK POOLS.
For the final stretch of the hike we dropped below the conifers into the domain of broad-leaved trees: first castagno, sweet chestnuts, then cerro, Turkey oaks, and finally a dense stand of leccio, holm oaks. We swam again, in the Crocchio River, before walking the last hour down to Sersale. After five days immersed in the high plateau of the Sila the Ionian Sea now stretched out before us, far below.
As we ambled into town, a final hurdle presented itself: Carmine had made a reservation at a restaurant, but then his mother called to invite us to dinner. Carmine could not say no to his mamma, but was loathe to cancel our booking at such short notice. It was the first time in our five days together that he was at a complete loss about how to proceed.
One of our group, Matteo—a formidable walker, companionable conversationalist, unflappable drinker, and resilient long-distance eater—came up with a brilliant suggestion: “Can’t we just eat at your mother’s house first, and then go to the restaurant afterwards for a second meal?” It struck me as the perfect solution, but the rest of the group was less inclined to power through two repasts in quick succession. So Carmine cancelled the restaurant. In Italy, particularly where cooking is concerned, mamma always comes up trumps.
A FORMIDABLE WALKER, COMPANIONABLE CONVERSATIONALIST, UNFLAPPABLE DRINKER, AND RESILIENT LONG-DISTANCE EATER.
And it turned out to be the right decision. Not only were we treated to a delectable Calabrian meal; Carmine’s dad then got out his accordion. Without waiting for the plates to be cleared from the table he simply cleared his throat and tensed his shoulders, clasping his instrument to his chest like a sleeping child. For a moment he sat like that, hunched over in silence with his eyes closed, as if waiting for inspiration from on high. Then he launched into an uptempo version of La Calabrisella, arpeggios and riffs pouring out of him like mirth from a bubbling brook. He sang from the belly, foot stomping, laughing whenever he stopped to catch his breath (click play on the sound file above for a sample). We joined in, clapped hands, and belted out the ensuing choruses in the best Calabrese dialect we could muster.
Later, as we were heading off to bed, Carmine greeted us with another of his trademark Calabrian idioms: “Chi mangia e non si corica, merita la forca!” Liberally translated: “If you don’t nap after eating, you deserve a good beating!”
Within a Forest Dark (Sila Walk/Days 3-5)
Within a Forest Dark [Days 3-5]
by Rudston Steward
he first Canto of Dante’s Inferno contains possibly the best-known lines in Italian literature: “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura / ché la diritta via era smarrita” (Midway upon the journey of our life / I found myself within a forest dark / for the straightforward pathway had been lost.)
Some scholars, and most Calabrians, believe that Dante’s “dark forest” was none other than the Sila in Calabria. Dante must have felt compelled, they say, to visit the abbey founded by Joachim of Fiore, the pre-eminent 12th Century theologian and writer. He would no doubt have explored the valleys that surround Joachim’s abbey and the town of San Giovanni in Fiore, must have gotten lost in these impenetrable forests. Dante rewards Joachim with a spot in Paradiso (Canto XII), calling him a prophet; surely this bespeaks the poet’s intimacy with the Calabrian selva oscura of the Sila?
Our Calabrian guide, Carmine, fervently believes the Dante story. And I, over the course of our seven-day Sila hike, in turn came to believe anything and everything Carmine said, for his knowledge of the local terrain was uncannily encyclopedic. An ethno-botanist by training, there was not a single plant we came across that Carmine couldn’t identify and elucidate—its common name, scientific name, nickname in the local dialect, traditional uses and anecdotal cultural history.
Hiking with Carmine was like trying to keep up with a mad-botanist-professor on a thrilling quest for rare (possibly non-existent) Calabrian plant specimens. He thought nothing of subjecting us to a bone-crunching two-hour detour, simply to show us a curiously shaped boulder he’s fond of (“I know it’s around here somewhere…”), or virtually marching us off a cliff to glimpse a rare fern that happened to grow on a ledge there. We careened constantly off-piste, trailing along behind Carmine like wide-eyed lab assistants in the contagious wake of his botanical enthusiasm.
Whenever Carmine got lost—an all too frequent occurrence—he would glare down at his GPS, pleading with it in Calabrese, cajoling. The GPS would beep; he’d look up, grinning, and then set off again at a clip, crashing through undergrowth like a gleeful child on a wild goose chase. He confessed to us that, as Dante put it, the “diritta via era smarrita.”
WE VEERED CONSTANTLY OFF-PISTE, TRAILING ALONG BEHIND CARMINE LIKE WIDE-EYED LAB ASSISTANTS IN THE CONTAGIOUS WAKE OF HIS BOTANICAL ENTHUSIASM.
Over the next three days, led by Carmine, we traversed the high plateau of the Sila.
On our way out of San Giovanni in Fiore (Day 2) we stopped to see Joachim’s abbey and tomb. In a glass cabinet, next to a bust of the prophet, a large manuscript was on display; I noted with foreboding, given that we were about to march off into the forest dark, that the words “forte tumultus” featured prominently in the selected text.
From San Giovanni we cut across a corner of the Sila Grande, a fifteen kilometer march south-west to Lake Ampollino. Its perimeter, when we finally got there, was bedecked with a dense carpet of wild strawberries. I got on my knees to eat them, as if prostrate in sylvan prayer. To reach our hotel for the night we then crossed the lake in plastic pedalò paddle boats that Carmine, in a stroke of logistical genius, had had delivered for us on the lake’s far shore.
Onwards (Day 3) into the majestic primary forests of Mount Gariglione and the Tacina Valley—the wild green heart of the Sila Piccola. In keeping with the hike’s Dantesque overtones, we passed through an area called the Valley of Purgatory—a labyrinth of crepuscular trails winding through monumental beech trees. Carmine’s tracks turned schizophrenic: every so often he’d saunter entropically out of sight, only to return moments later with a porcino mushroom held triumphantly in hand.
There’s nowhere to stay up in the Gariglione, so Carmine pulled some strings and arranged to have an old mountain refuge, the Rifugio Latteria, opened up for us for the night—with catering. The chefs prepared our porcini, one of five dinner courses; an astonishing meal to partake of in such a remote setting. Then they drove off in their jeep, leaving us huddled around our bonfire, well-fed, exhausted and content.
SOFTER AND MORE GUTTURAL, FRAYING INTO A POLYPHONIC CANINE LAMENT.
Just before midnight we heard the wolves. Their howls at first soared in unison, melancholy sirens bayed into the night sky, and then tapered back down to earth, softer and more guttural, fraying into a polyphonic canine lament.
Carmine gazed into the dark and said: “They are not far off.”
Having route-marched us over fifty-five kilometers in the first three days, Carmine then took it easy; only a half-day’s walking the next day (Day 4). We set out from the refuge at 9am. Mid-morning we came upon a dead squirrel, neatly laid out across the path—a sacrifice, perhaps, to the shady spectres of the Sila’s selva oscura. We had reached our destination, the Locanda Pecora Nera B&B in the village of Buturo, by lunchtime.
Somehow, without any of us noticing, Carmine had sniffed out another mound of porcini for our supper.
Tomorrow we will start dropping down from the plateau. It will take a further three days to extract ourselves from this magnificent dark forest, and walk all the way down to the Ionian Sea.
The Vale of Acheronthia (Sila Walk/Day 2)
The Vale of Acheronthia [Day 2]
by Rudston Steward
he Calabrian Sila is one of Italy’s most extensive forests, a swathe of green spanning 150,000 hectares across the provinces of Cosenza, Crotone and Catanzaro.
La Sila, as Italians call it, has fascinated me since my childhood in Rome, when a classmate returned from a summer holiday in Calabria with tall tales of gnarly pine trees older than Jesus Christ, impenetrable forests with maze-like mountain trails, and the rabid howling of wolves by night. The Sila became a quasi-mythical territory in my adolescent imagination; I was reading Tolkien’s The Hobbit at the time, and identified it with Mirkwood in Middle-Earth, where Bilbo Baggins slays the giant spider and hangs out with the elves. Our family never actually set foot in Calabria back then, so there was no reality-check, no reason, ever, to dispel my fantasies.
Things stayed that way for over thirty years—until I was invited, earlier this year, to join a 7-day hike across the plateau of the Sila Piccola (the southernmost of the Sila’s three regions) and then down to the Ionian Sea. I jumped at the chance (overcoming my long-held conviction that to venture into the Sila without an invisibility-enabled magic ring on hand was to offer myself up foolishly to the Calabrian forest ghouls that would, inevitably, come a-knocking).
TALL TALES OF GNARLY PINE TREES OLDER THAN JESUS CHRIST, IMPENETRABLE FORESTS WITH MAZE-LIKE MOUNTAIN TRAILS, AND THE RABID HOWLING OF WOLVES BY NIGHT.
We started our hike at the ruins of Acheronthia, a town abandoned in 1844 after a dramatic series of events that read like a systematic catalog of loss: from its flourishing apex as a Byzantine kastron (fortified citadel) with a population of over two thousand, it was plunged into irreversible decline by an outbreak of the plague in 1528; minor earthquakes throughout the 17th Century and then a major quake in 1783 inflicted increasingly severe damage; by 1843 only three hundred inhabitants remained. Chronic malaria-bearing water shortages then dealt the final blow. In 1844 emergency plans were drawn up for a completely new town (modern Cerenzia) in a more salubrious valley nearby, and the population was gradually relocated. By 1862 old Acheronthia had been completely abandoned.
Not much is left of the crumbling old citadel today. The eerie quiet of abandonment clings to the site—the sad stillness of truncated lives, forgotten narratives, a sense of place interrupted—and is augmented by the dramatic setting: old Acheronthia sits on a flat-topped oval mound, like a massive plinth, its sides rising near-vertically above the surrounding valley. Looking west from this raised plinth we could see the long day’s walk that lay ahead: up over the bare hills towards Castelsilano, and then further up weaving through forests and farmland to our first overnight stop, the town of San Giovanni in Fiore, about twenty kilometers away.
By the end of June the Calabrian sun has extinguished the last vestiges of spring, extracted all moisture from the land like precious drops of nectar squeezed from pulp. We crossed a dry river bed, scrambled and crunched up a gravel path, picked our way across a desiccated hillside pock-marked with rampant thistles. As we climbed the view opened up behind us, back towards the Ionian coast north of Crotone: strips of shimmer-grey olive groves interspersed with dun-barren fields. On the steeper slopes a scruffy tapestry of oaks stretched like worn green fabric over the cracked carapace of the earth.
ON THE STEEPER SLOPES A SCRUFFY TAPESTRY OF OAKS STRETCHED LIKE WORN GREEN FABRIC OVER THE CRACKED CARAPACE OF THE EARTH.
It was well after 2pm when we trudged into Castelsilano, our projected lunch stop. Absolutely no trace of human life: the siesta was in full swing. The bar we’d pinned our hopes of sustenance on was shut; we slumped as one against a wall, stumped and starving. What now?
A window creaked open overhead. A dark-haired woman leaned out, taking a long hard look at the mad bunch that had plodded across her piazza—in the heat of the day, when all sensible folks take a nap—and plonked itself down on her doorstep.
“Can I help you?”
We explained our hungry predicament, and she softened. Appalled, no doubt, by the unfathomable prospect of anyone ever having to forego their lunch. She sprang into action, marshalling the joint forces of local solidarity and hospitality. A flurry of phone calls pinpointed the whereabouts of the proprietor (who was, of course, having a “pennichella”—a snooze). To our astonishment the gentleman agreed to drag himself out of bed and come to our rescue. He appeared within minutes looking fresh as a Calabrian daisy, keys in hand, sporting designer glasses and a matching black 76 Glory polo shirt.
Unlocking the door he proclaimed—passionately, like a general rallying the troops for one last heroic stand—“Ora accendo la piastra!” Let me turn on the grill.
Spurred on by our voracious appetites, our barista-hero served up multiple rounds of the house special, panini con salciccia. Grilled sausage sandwiches—equal parts delectable dribbly pork fat and charred crispy crust. These provided just enough fuel to propel our tired frames and pulp-squeezed metabolisms through the arduous afternoon’s hike: four hours over increasingly forested terrain, up and down and along and steeply up again. All the way, finally, to San Giovanni in Fiore—the oldest and largest town of the Sila, perched 1,119 meters above sea level, high above the Vale of Acheronthia.
We had reached the gateway to the impenetrable forests and maze-like trails of the Sila Grande. Gnarly pine trees were lying in wait for us up ahead, tomorrow and beyond; up ahead where the rabid wolves howl by night.
Straight-shootin' Calabrese
Straight-shootin' Calabrese
by Rudston Steward
rom a hole-in-the-wall in the town of Bova, hovering high above the Ionian Sea in the Aspromonte, the eternally-beaming twin brothers Mimmo and Nino serve up their formidable “lestopittas,” street-food flatbreads baked with an array of palate-scorching chili-based toppings.
Ideally lestopittas are washed down with shots of bergamot-infused grappa, liberally dispensed by Mimmo throughout the day.
The menu is a masterpiece of nomenclature: the Ecodiesel, the Turbo Diesel, the Bi-fuel, the Atomica. And—my favourite—the aptly named “Menefotto” (literally “I-don’t-give-a-damn”) which comes laced with both chili peppers and ‘nduja (the blisteringly hot Calabrian chili pepper and cured meat paste).
The shopfront is covered in signs and graffiti. In pride of place, taped to the front door, is a warning: “Friends are like beans, they talk behind your back.”
For a taste of straight-shootin’ Calabrese chez Mimmo and Nino, listen to the soundbite above…
Translation: Mimmo proclaims that being vegetarian means you eat meat and that being vegan means you eat everything. He then tries to convince us to eat another lestopitta, “a small sweet-n-sour one, with honey, and chili.”
Another customer, while waiting for his Tubbo Disel, informs us in no uncertain terms that Florentine cuisine is no good at all:
“Not even a chicken would eat it. Pappa al pomodoro is just wet bread with tomatoes. Ribollita is just wet bread with vegetables. It’s disgusting! They understand absolutely nothing.”
Take that, Tuscany!