From Passo del Gallo up we went, hauling ourselves to the top of the cliff face by using the handy chains placed there by the ever-helpful C.A.I. – the Italian Alpine Club. Once on the final, slippery slope of Monte Manico del Lume, and within shouting distance of the wild goats, I began shouting. The goats stared at us for some time, seemingly unable or unwilling to decide whether they should shift themselves for the benefit of two grubby interlopers. After many howls, growls, threats in various languages and imprecations, the beasts scurried ahead, still on our narrow path. This wasn’t what they were supposed to do. It meant we were forced to keep up the howls and threats until we and the goats reached the peak, the summit, the highest heights.
Naturally a large crucifix awaited us – surrounded by the goats, who irreverently left droppings everywhere. A plaque on a stone pillar assured us that we’d reached 801 meters above sea level – about 2,450 feet. It wasn’t the Andes or even the Alps, but since Monte Manico del Lume rises practically straight out of the Mediterranean, the effect is fairly impressive.
What I failed to tell you in earlier paragraphs is that, as we climbed up the mountain, Alison paused to take a photo with her fancy new Nokia cell phone, which combines many nifty features into a handsome package, but defeats users over the age of 9. Having wrestled with the phone and the built-in camera, we discovered we’d unintentionally made a video of our struggle. It’s embarrassing. And I’ll be damned if either of us can figure out how to get the video off the phone and onto a computer. So, for now, no video, and no digital photos by Alison, either.
You will have noticed that there are images to accompany these blog entries. Unbeknownst to us they were taken by a vigorous young Italian hiker, who appeared suddenly – like a hunter popping out of a hole – and did not seem as surprised as we were to be sharing the summit with other humans and goats. In other words, Luciano Parisi, as his name is, had been following us at some distance, and had taken several photos of the mountainside with us clinging to it. Here’s that pic again.
Luciano asked Alison to take a photo of him for his wife. We in turn asked Luciano to take some photos of us, since we were incapable of making our digital equipment work (Alison’s old Olympus was working fine, of course, but her analog photos won’t be ready for weeks, months, years…). Affable and over-educated, Luciano turns out to be a teacher of Italian literature at Exeter University in the UK. We exchanged email addresses and bingo, a few days later the photos arrived.
Since in our lives at least all roads seem to lead either to Rome or Paris, I was not surprised that Luciano’s last name was Parisi. Parisi is the modern Italian version of Parisii (with two i’s). The Parisii were Gallic tribes-people who lived, among other places, in what’s now Paris… a lovely place on the Sequana River (the Seine) which Caesar dubbed “Lutetia Parisiorum” – meaning “City of Mud of the Parisii.” Luciano was aware of the Paris family connection, but the City of Mud part of the reference had until then escaped his ken. “I’m heading back to Isca Dumniorum,” he said. Noticing our perplexity, he explained (in an email, later): Isca Dumniorum is modern-day Exeter.
Back to my earlier mention of the “white lump in the background, to the left of the image” (in my last blog post). Here it is, blown up for your delectation.
That white lump is none other than the Santuario di Montallegro, our destination for the night. With afternoon swinging into gear, and another 3 or 4 hours of hiking ahead of us, and not much daylight, we had to skidaddle. So we said farewell to Luciano the Parisian, shouted at the goats, and watched them leap into the air, evoking Dante. This was not the first time we’d thought of the great poet since we set out before dawn to conquer Monte Manico del Lume. Earlier, we’d thought of hunters as inmates in Dante’s Inferno. Now we recalled the famous line, also in the Inferno (Canto XXI), in which one of the damned blows a monumental raspberry: … avea del cul fatto trombetta (he’d made a trumpet of his ass).
Why did we have this thought? Because as the goats fled before our savage cries, they leapt into the air and farted mightily. It was quite a ghastly and a gassy spectacle. If any of you reading this knows anything about goats and gas attacks, please strike a match and illuminate this episode for us (but don’t hold the match too close).
Now, I could stretch this tale out another blog post or two, but I’ll telescope it and tell you that I fell and slipped only three more times (Alison fell only once), and with my torn shoes and clicking knees was able to limp up and down several other, lesser mountains and then along an accordion ridge. I wheezed, and it kept expanding as we walked along it, putting the sanctuary beyond our reach. Staggering, full of wonderful thoughts about Dante, hunters, goats, Eternal Returns, tea parties, Afghanistan, corporate fascism and suchlike, we made it to Montallegro for a gorgeous sunset. This being Italy, we were able to check into a comfortable room at a handsome hostelry called – you’ll never guess – Albergo Ristorante Montallegro. Before the ritual bathing and feasting, we summoned the strength to crawl back up to the night-lit sanctuary. Montallegro is a startlingly rich repository of the hopes and prayers of locals since the 1500s. But that’s another story. A domani…
(photos copyright: Luciano Parisi)
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