The true hand that holds my heart resides in the countryside around Cetona even more than in the town itself, and walking in the country on dirt roads through this landscape takes me home into my truest being, my purest happiness.

The countryside here is as terraced horizontally as it is vertically, with handkerchiefs of disparate fields patched together like an enormous quilt stretching all the way to the horizon. It’s like the quilt is rolling on the very surface of the ocean, hills cresting so very softly then falling again, fields joining each other seamlessly like a succession of small waves in a harmonious act of supreme perfection, all the way to the sky beyond and above. My eye dances on the waves like a surfer, and here, like a surfer, I find my joy. God could not have made this this beautiful.

It threatened rain today again, after raining for the past several days, and I set out for a walk. The top of Monte Cetona, rising above and to the side of the town like the shoulder of a taller brother, was covered in mist and dark clouds, as it often is at this time of year. But moving away from the mountain the sky opens to a painter’s sketch of angry dark purple slashes layered over with happy swatches of light grey and misty blue and fast moving white clouds clearing the occasional patch of bright blue and sunlight. The fields this time of year are like a seamstress’s most delicate handiwork, with carefully stitched rows of trees with leaves the color of terracotta sown between palettes of greens, interspersed with brown patches, rusty ditches, the occasional bright red leaf, and the white of gravel roads taking off here and there like pieces of soft unraveling ribbon. The occasional tree bursts fire red, each leaf in relief against the green. I pass trees laden with kakis bright as orange Halloween globes or pumpkins hanging from their branches. Below them brown fields lying fallow since the corn harvest weave seamlessly with expanses of bright green grass, strange remnants of summer or a promise of spring. Pine trees, dark and tall, line a dirt road going up a hill to a house; on an adjacent hill, rows and rows of vines are turning yellow and red, ready to lose their leaves for the winter. A sliver of land suddenly catches a ray of sun and shines moss green like an emerald. Olive trees shimmer silvery and lovely, broad and expansive next to rows of narrow black cypress trees saluting on the crest of a hill. A gust of wind brings a flurry of brown leaves to the ground. Soon the trees will be bare.

Voices rise sudden and happy from a field where men are picking olives. Through the silvery branches I see the nets, red, on the ground, laced across the grass, olives fall purple here and there and gathering together where the lands slopes. Someone talks and laughs. I see chickens in the field below, in the grass, near a little makeshift shed, and I walk down the hill to see if I can pet them. They run away quickly. One is black, she reminds me of Bella. I think of her, how she died just before I left. I think of my other chickens, and my cat, Joe, and my boyfriend Aram. Images run through my head. I feel suddenly sad. I turn back, I climb the hill back onto the road.

The road is muddy. I pass the stream by the old mill; the water pools there and gets quite deep. I think back to when the engine of my motorino would flood out there sometimes when Lucia and I would go for a ride, me insisting that if we rode through fast enough we could make it and come through to the other side. But we would nearly always get stuck, and Lucia and I would laugh and push the motorbike out of the water and up the hill, our shoes and pants soaked. There is a nice bridge there now, and a beautiful house that I once recall was a rubble.

Along the road I notice patches of some kind of tall prickly grasses we picked in middle school to dry and paint for an art project, maybe to give to our mothers. I painted mine silver, maybe, though they are so pretty just as they are, brown. It cheers me to see them, I remember the joy of taking them home, and I would like to pick some, but then I would have to carry them for the rest of my walk. I pass a little stone house along the stream that has been recently restored, like a cabin in the woods; for decades it was a ruin that I would pass running because I thought strange men or creatures might live there at night. Now it is a lovely stone house, and just beyond it a lovely pink house I would love to own.

I pass the edge of the brown field where a farmer, an old man I trusted, once parked his tractor at the edge of a secluded row of trees, the tractor I was riding on for fun as a kid, and molested me. I think of my little jeans and his big hands. I turn away. My eyes skim the gravel and the puddles on the ground. My mind moves away quickly seeking refuge, though it stops just long enough to remember his fat hands and square, thick fingernails, and the blue of his eyes. I wonder if he molested others, maybe his daughters and granddaughters. They never do it just once. I wish he were not dead because I would like to ask him, how, how he did this to a little girl with a brown sweater. Who else did he harm?

I walk faster. I look up the road passed Greta and Pietro’s house, and over the hill. Dark clouds weigh down the sky and the landscape looks like it’s painted a darker shade of green. But as I round the curve the landscape opens to reveal a perfect slice of a hill in full sunlight, like someone thrust a beam of light on it from a theater catwalk above just to please me, to cheer me. I stop and smile. I smile at the humor of life, a moment shady and a moment bright.  The ground is muddy and marked by the tires of a tractor. I hear a tractor, and I turn. A tall blue tractor drives by pulling a cart carrying cases of olives, headed to the mill. I stop to let it go by. The farmer waves; I smile, and I am comforted.

I pass little sheds where farmers keep their tools and their animals; I see patches of white in the grass and realize they are ducks, foraging in an open field. I stop to talk to them. I am now back on the paved road and cars pass me going too fast, unaware, uncaring. I don’t like that about Italy. I pass the place where all these cats live, two or three adult cats with five or six kittens now; they come out running and I shoo them back toward their shed, beyond the fence, so they will not come out onto the busy road where no one will stop for a cat or any other animal for that matter. I don’t like that about Italy, either. I walk up Finoglio, a steep, steep street into town. I turn and walk backwards so I can look out back onto the landscape as I rise. My breathing is labored, the air filling my lungs, brisk though not cold. I make a mental note to pick nettles before it is too late, before it gets too cold, so I can make risotto. Make sure dogs have not peed on them, Luisa said.

The countryside is stunning and familiar like a glove I used to wear. I smell firewood burning everywhere. We used to hate it growing up, the smell of firewood; our clothes smelled like firewood all winter long, always, and we felt unclean. Now it smells true. I don’t care about my clothes.

I breathe.

Sybil Fix©2013