We found ourselves on the top of a hill, in a town surrounded by ancient walls. There, after all elements of self-clarification we lost sight of everything.
“If you get as far as Rome you can go a little further in to the mountains.”
Head inland and northeast towards L’Aquila and Parco Nazionale del Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga. The road holds its magnificence in height, viaducts upon viaducts and tunnel after tunnel forever heading for peaks dressed in white. When you get so far you’ll come across rows upon rows of tents on the outskirts of a departed city full of cranes – cranes that would look at home in any other landscape but they were out of place in this one. It’s a sore history of dust and disaster, centuries of harmony with the land only to be crushed by landfall and the quaking earth beneath. More noticeable then is the engineering feat that is the road you drive on – slowly circulating the city of crushed rubble beneath, surrounded by green hills high in the Italian sun.
Roseto degli Abruzzi is a land where olive groves lay upon steepened hills hiding pizzerias, and gems of disguised gardens to sit and view the coastline below. Its a place for vineyards and secret courtyards, with blossoming sweet trees, a place where the dust of the road gets caught in the western sun as it sets hazy and red through evergreen trees passed towns and cities towering above. To the east is the dawn, and the Adriatic that covers outstretched horizons with deep green waters and blockades of rock and stone.
In the day we headed for mountain top towns, markets, fresh pastries, bell-towers and the clarification of coffee. We fought against dead animals festering in the sun, broken water fountains and closed wooden archways armed with cats basking their totality.
But on one particular day we managed to find the rain and then clarity. After following many a road west, higher and higher still we reached a valley of tall grass. We settled there for a while against the verge; I had time to take in the sincerity of the air that was in dept to the downpour yet to come. As the clouds loomed, the grass before me grew darker and darker still. We looked north towards the towering hills climbing higher to frame the town in front of us; a wall of stone set in the landscape centuries before. The heavens then opened and we were wet within the seconds it took to take shelter.
There were two dogs roaming, finding water and shelter in the corner of the courtyard to the left. To the right four nuns disappeared up a winding stair of stone, hands holding their hats and an umbrella shared between the two that smiled back at us. By the time we had all set foot on their side of the archway, they’d gone with a flash of black shoes upon their heels, around the corner, out of sight. I had foot wear ill fit for the climb and insufficient for the rainfall – by this point my feet were sodden. We decided to follow the dogs as their city was otherwise deserted. Finding a path to follow we entered in to the stone plateau heading for the rooftops above and eventually – the castle. But we had walls to attend to, stairs to climb and paths to find. The rain got worse with more height, and upon reaching the clouds our vision betrayed us…
