Part 4 The Whole Family Together

The Whole Family Together At Last!

 Im still new to this blog thing so it feels a little funny writing to everybody but writing to nobody so Im still not sure how to start one of these, do I say "Dear Blog" or "To anyone out there in the blogosphere" or just some kind exclamation like "BLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGGGGG!"

Either way, today finds me at an agriturismo in Greve just southeast of Florence, Italy where Ive been staying with my whole family in a sweet spot with groves of lavendar and a cascading hill of grapes and olives and a three-legged hound dog named Luna that chases the lizards and cats and then lays out in the sun on her back with her giant ears sprawled out.



My brother and sister both left in the last 24 hours ending a wonderful stretch of time with our whole family gathered together in this beautiful country and in a couple days I will head off North and East to meet my college friend John in Venice where we will continue on hitching rides in cars and boats or whatever else passes by as we make our way down the coast of Croatia. But just now Ive escaped the heat of the day to recount some tales from the last two weeks.

After flying from Belgrade back to Rome, I caught a train to Venice where I met up with my mom and dad in a city that defies the imagination. Seriously, if you havent been there, pull up a google map of venice so that you can see from above just how convoluded it is. With 420 bridges crossing an insane patchwork of canals it is the easiest place to get lost that ive ever been. The average width of the little alleys that pass for streets is about 6 feet so you never have any point of reference and all directions look the same. I thought I would jot down some google walking directions from the train station to my parents hotel (a mile and a half as the crow flies) but what I found was a list of 47 prompts most of which were turns. Needless to say I gave up on that idea and just got lost instead. But eventually I found Hotel Mercurio and a happy reunion ensued.

View from San Marco Square

Looking out over the grand canal

During the next two days we did our best to cover the wide array of free art exhibits that were scattered about the city as a part of the Biennial celebration. We saw sculptures and videos and drawings and mixed media of every variety. As opposed to an art gallery where you walk from room to room until your legs fall off, these exhibits were each in their own unique space so we would walk into a church with a 50 foot tall mosaic of christ made up of unique individually painted stone eggs (like an enormous 3D dot drawing) and then we would walk for 10 minutes to a giant bamboo tower that we could walk to the top of and then we would wander to the basement of a different building where each room had a different visual effects created with fluorescent lights. Each exhibit represented a different country and they all told their own story about that place.

Workers adding to the top of this bamboo scupture

The whole thing is maade of simply bamboo and thin rope

The spiral pattern of the structure from below

Light art in one of the many exhibits around town

The blue room

But the highlight of our time in Venice (of which I have no pictures) was an evening where we saw two completely different kinds of music. First we went to an opera performance with a sampling of some of the most famous works. The tenor made the show, pouring his whole being into each piece so that you could tell he lived for those moments sharing that place with his audience. The power of his voice and the story he told with his eyes and his hands was unbelievable. And then walking back after dinner there was a girl (from Georigia as it turned out) singing old R&B songs in a tiny bar. We watched from outside of the window and then I wrote out my request for Jackie Wilson "Your Love Keeps Lifting Me" on a piece of paper that I help up to the window. She invited us in and played our song and we all danced into the night as she belted out soulful hits with an effortless voice.

Selva Wolkenstein in a rare break in the clouds

Finally the rain cleared and we hiked

FromVenice we took the train up into the Dolomite Mountains of Northern Italy. Marah met us there and after a couple days of solid rain, the wheather broke and we headed off on a hut-to-hut hiking adventure. In the alps, hiking is a much more luxurious experience than the freeze dried food and heavy pack excursions that Im used to...but I wont complain! In the Dolomites, you are never far from a Refugio that serves beer and wine and delicious local cuisine. The sights from the trail were nothing short of spectacular and we met some delightful people along the way.

The Odles in the mist

We shared lots of wine with these delightful Germans

The view from our hut on the second night

Every day brough dramatic clouds and light to the mountains

On the last night, a group of friends who sang in the choir of the local church showed up at the hut where we were staying to drink wine and celebrate the full moon. Late at night as Marah and I faced off in a game of chess, we heard beautiful singing from outside and there they were singing to the moon. It was a delightful scene I wont soon forget.

From the Dolomites we descended to the town of Bolzano where we rented a car to drive to Florence where we would meet Ian. Our two day drive took us through some wild country with some wild Italian drivers. At one point we were basically descending a slot canyon (like the narrow sandstone cracks in Utah) by car. We avoided other vehicles by a matter of inches and we passed through more tunnels than we could count. But we made it safely to Florence and at last we were all five together once again!

How lucky I am to have my family. Every day we had together was such a gift, so much love and so much to learn from each other. Right away adventure found us: that unpredictable sponaneity of travel that is such a joy. We arrived in the town of Arezzo totally unaware that it was the night of the joust. The biggest event in the town each year, the joust pits the four historic neighborhoods against each other in a very real lance and horse affair in the central square of the town. The scene was a rowdy one and the sounds of the streets from our restaurant were a wonderful backdrop to our first dinner together. We got so lost in our food and the wine they kept bringing that we lost all track of time. When we made our way back to the car and on to our apartment for the night we discovered that we were locked out with no hope of getting in. Just when we thought we would be sleeping in the park, Marah used her limited Italian to convince the proprietor of a nearby four star hotel (the only one that was still open) to cut us a deal and so, pretending there were four of us instead of five, we made it to our room and fell promptly asleep.

The Marche region

With Ians arrival the three Wilson boys were reunited at last

Exploring

The next few days were spent in the Marche region in a small agriturismo where the owners served us an endless dinner each night with ingredients from their garden and the surrounding area. We spent the time catching up with each others lives and exploring the rolling hills nearby.

The summer solstice was a notable day that unfolded as some of the best days of my life have, with no particular plan. In search of a hike or swim we drove 30 minutes to neighboring town and we stocked up for lunch with fresh pecorino cheese and proscuito and bread and tomatoes and arugula for next to nothing. We meant to go go hiking but once we parked, we only made it as far as the water. At a long dark pool we jumped from the cliffs and climbed along the hot rock where it overhung the water until we fell in. We found warm mud on the river bank that we smeared and stamped on each other so that I was covered in muddy hand prints. After a long nap in the sun, those hands were left behind in an akward sunburn.

Whoops!

Back in town the laziness of the day stretched out like one long dream. Ian and I found the community garden in the town of Urbana and did our best to learn the story of that place with our extremely limited Italian. And then with a bottle of wine we wound our way up to the hilltop town of Peglio where the suns long slow departure lit up the surrounding hills. From our grassy perch we watched the bees in the lavendar and did handstands until all the change in our pockets was lost in the grass and we lay on our backs watching the sky turn every blue with the swifts flying high above.

Ian savoring the solstice

They cultivate land on just about every hill they can find in Italy

Lookin' good papa bear

And then, we made it back to our place and ate and ate and drank and drank and what more can I say when the sequence of photos below captures the progression of it all which ended with all five us asleep in one bed, no captions necesarry. I love my family!

From Marche we returned to Tuscany with two nights in Pienza where Ian and Marah and I took a day to take our own excursion in the car that led us to the top of a large rock above the town of Campiglia D'Orcia. Our exciting find that day was an enormous porcupine quill. And eventually after another day of driving through Tuscany we made our way here where I am now.

Ummmm!!!!!

With many a journey ahead for those shoes

Ifyou've made it this far than you are a real trooper for putting up with so much commentary, but I hope you have enjoyed the photos and I feel so lucky to be here with my family and to have this time and to have so many close friends back home when I return!