The first day of the pilgrimage I walked from Fidenza to Costamezzana (near Parma in the region of Emilia Romagna.) Costamezzana is a small village with one restaurant and one church and a hostel where pilgrims stay for 10 euro a night. I arrived at lunch time and was famished. No, I didn’t want a frugal lunch of bread and cheese by the roadside. It was my first day, and I had not gotten lost but I was very tired and I eagerly entered the restaurant and told them “Una persona.” There was only one other table occupied. There was no menu. I was told what the options were. I had a plate of salumi, prosciutto, sopressata, and pancetta to start. It seemed at first, too much, but I ate it all. Then I had crespelle (crepes) with a super good bechamel sauce, and then an insalata mista. I had a 1/4 liter of the fizzy white wine of the region. The waiter, hearing that I was a pilgrim, brought me a magazine about the Via Francigena. In it I read an interview with Don Mario Lusek, Director of the National Office for the Pastoral of Free Time, Tourism, and Sport. Quoting him:
“I think that nothing is more secular, and more Christian, than considering life as a journey, a search, a pilgrimage towards the discovery of the source of our common human nature. We believers call it God. No one, in the name of God, is a stranger to me.”
The lunch turns out to be free. The waiter says: “Because it is the first day of your pilgrimage.”
The next day was full of rain, mud, wet hay, wet feet, and strangers who became friends. I left the hostel at 6:45 and went to the one bar (attached to the one restaurant) intending to get a glass of hot milk into which I could pour my protein powder. The bar was closed. A sign said “Chiuso Lunedi.” I ate some of my energy nuggets there in the empty street and headed down the hill, in the rain, following my printed directions. At the bottom of hill I turned up a steep narrow road through the woods. The beech and Pine trees dripped with water. On my left a ravine with a stream and on my right a steep hill with a castello at the top. There was not a single car nor a single person. With the rain and mist and heavily wooded road it seemed almost dark. The square red brick tower of the castello stuck up through the trees. My shell rain pants did not breathe. The hike up the hill had generated enough heat that tomatoes would have grown in the pants. I turned onto a tractor track next to a vineyard. The shoes I had waterproofed twice seemed to be letting in water. I walked through the wet grass on the track and my socks felt suspiciously wet. I told myself I must be imagining it.
The clay-like dirt of the track had turned to sticky mud in the rain. Every few steps I had to stop and poke at the mud on my shoes with my hiking poles. It quickly piled up on my shoes making it feel like I was walking on very uneven platform shoes. “Note to self: tractor tracks don’t work in the rain.”
I had hopes of passing a hamlet with a bar so I could have breakfast but thus far it was silent countryside with no signs of a person. I came to a paved road which was a relief after the mud and I through the mist I could see some houses. One beautiful stately green one with rows of white-trimmed windows that came and went through the mist. When I arrived at the small group of homes, not a person was to be seen. Just to humor myself I said out-loud: “Anyone want to give a pilgrim some breakfast?”
I was reminded of the poem The Listeners, and I quoted to myself:
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveler;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
After a short bit on the paved road, the route had me turning onto another tractor track. The valley and the lines of hills around it, were so lovely, even in the misty rain, that I had to stop, get out my camera and take a photo.
The fields all had different patterns and colors, some green, some golden, and here and there a farm house on a ridge, and mists filled the valleys. It was utterly tranquil. Then I tried to walk down the track. My shoes became impossibly caked with mud at each step. I was wobbling ridiculously on clumpy uneven shoes. I tried to do a silly shaking of my feet with each step. Nothing helped. At the bottom of the hill was a farm house. “Maybe someone will be up and about now that it is 9:00 am,” I thought.
A dog came out barking and a man followed. “Buon Giorno!” I called out. He responded and we exchanged a few words and soon enough I was invited inside. I took off my muddy shoes at his doorstep and followed him upstairs where his wife fixed me coffee with warm milk served in a bowl. I was more weary than I had realized. I sat with my feet in my wet socks at their kitchen table for over an hour. Their two teen-aged children arose and came into the kitchen sleepy-eyed and found a wet pilgrim at their breakfast table.
We shared a stimulating conversation about the death penalty (a topic that Italians often bring up with me due to my country’s stance on it) and about health care (my pet issue lately.) The man had traveled in California and with a big grin he repeated a few times that there is a town in California named after him: Modesto. I had never before met an Italian called Modesto.
They sent me off with a prosciutto sandwich and a chunk of Parmeggiano Reggiano. Two products from their region which they’re very proud of.
I have a Golite pack which is light weight, not super small but not large either. The pack, with my stuff in it, weighs 19 pounds but that’s without water, so add a few more pounds for water. A rule of thumb for an appropriate pack weight is that a fourth of your body weights is cumbersome. From one fifth and down, you should be able to hike comfortably. A fifth of my body weight is about 26 pounds.
oddly green pistacchio ice-cream at Safeway when I could be in the Sicilian Gelateria in Florence, getting a vero pistacchio gelato?
and it doesn’t have a language that sings. And somehow, my country doesn’t seem to know as much about romance as Italy does.
market in March, I can’t live without the Chianti countryside in the spring with the iris and poppies under the olive trees. I can’t live without the train to Naples and the hydrofoil to Stromboli and the Aeolian spaghetti on Salina with the best capers in the world. I can’t live without finding my bike at the Florence train station after a trip to the islands, getting on it in my sun dress, with a pack on my back, and biking through the Piazza del Duomo, headed home to Sant’Ambrogio, with the bells of Giotto’s tower resounding around me. 
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