Highway2Home: Learning 2 Speak & Walk in Italiano

The week I most anticipated at Lucca Italian School featured a special course, "Parla e Cammina" (Speak and Walk), led by Angelo, one of the school's founders, who organized five excursions ranging from a stroll around Lucca's medieval walls to a challenging trek at Cinque Terre. As I know from my years of acting, learning a part (or in this case, a language) means internalizing the words in your body, feeling them in your muscle and bones. As our little Parla e Cammina group hiked up and down the impossibly beautiful countryside, filling our hearts and lungs with Italiano, I think my brain, overstuffed with classroom lessons, did indeed redistribute my new language throughout fingers and toes and the end of my nose. Now when I hear "formaggio," I smell Parmesan. And when I say "faccio un giro," my feet start moving.

Angelo has already published an engaging account of our expeditions on his Lucca Italian School blog, including some great photos of our small but intrepid group, Diane from Melbourne, Australia, Maria Luzia of São Paulo, Brazil, and me. See luccaitalianschool.blogspot.com and read "Speak & Walk Italian: A Short Account of a Memorable Week." Don't be daunted by the Italian text; an English translation follows each Italian section in the blog. I'll try not to duplicate the information in his post, but rather add a little of my perspective.

As I said, Angelo led us on an amble around Lucca's walls, but this introductory excursion gave no hint of the "walking" challenges to come. Our second excursion took us to what would be my third visit to the Garfagnana valley to the beautiful heart of the valley, Castelnuovo Garfagnana and its fortress built in 1500, the Fortezza di Montalfonso. The House of Este, rulers based far to the north in Ferrara, built the fortezza on what was then the border with the Republic of Lucca and used this stronghold to keep an eye on possible invaders (I vouch for its steep perch above the town below). Its most famous commander was Ludovico Ariosto who was tasked with the prosaic work of chasing bandits and collecting taxes which may have driven him to balance his day job by writing the epic poem of chivalry and fantasy, Orlando Furioso (literally translated as "Mad Orlando") that has influenced so many writers ever since, including Spenser, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Rushdie. (To tell the truth, he wrote Orlando Furioso before he became commander.) I first met Ariosto's Italian Renaissance masterpiece as a college English major and never dreamed I'd cross paths with him in a Garfagnana fortress! Lord Byron, who spent a great deal of time in Tuscany, has been cited as the English author closest in spirit to Ariosto, and as it turned out on our third walk, we followed in his footsteps, too.

Another brooding day in the Garfagnana after our bushwack, er, climb to the Fortezza di Montalfonso.

on the Ariosto Footpath.

Back down in Castelnuovo, look what we found! Don Quixote! As inspired by Ariosto's Mad Orlando? Sculpted by Angelo Mugnaini.

The Etruscans discovered the thermal waters in the hills separating Pisa and Lucca, but it was the Romans who developed the facilities that would attract travelers across centuries to seek spiritual and physical renewal in the healing waters at San Giuliano Terme. Lord Byron was among these seekers, but our third trek took us far past his destination and on to Dante's Pass which divides Lucca from Pisa and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Here the Leaning Tower is a bump on the horizon (albeit a listing one if you can make it out in the photo) and the seaward climate is Mediterranean, unlike Lucca's climate which is much wetter and calmer.

Pisa on the distant horizon as spied from the hills above San Giuliano Terme. Don't be misled by the tower in the far left; it's the airport control tower.

Dante's Pass is so named because he referenced "the mountain by which people from Pisa cannot see Lucca" in The Divine Comedy. We hiked an open path up the divide bucking a wind that felt as familiar to me as one coming off the Rockies in northern Montana. The low brush and dryness of the Pisa side of the divide, which has a Mediterranean climate, also felt a bit like Montana. Attention Duck Brothers: we saw a duck blind! It was the first and only evidence I encountered of the storied Italian love of shooting game, if I don't count the signs I later saw posted all over Umbria, even on fenced yards and buildings, stating "Divieto da Caccia" (Shooting Prohibited).

Fierce wind on Dante's Pass made our hair stand on end!

Proof that the Italians hunt in these parts!

The real find on this invigorating outing was the bust of Dante Alighieri just off the old path leading from Pisa to Lucca. I don't know how old the sculpture is, but it is badly weathered and nearly vanquished by brush and vines. This surprising monument to Dante is far different than the pristine marble tomb in which he is enshrined in Ravenna, which I visited later in my travels down the Po River valley.

Dante Alighieri looking east toward Lucca.

On our fourth journey, we traveled by car, train, and finally on foot to Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare in Cinque Terre. I have so many great photos of this hike that I'll save them for my next post. In the meantime, feast your eyes on this lone bella vista.

Looking back at Vernazza from the footpath to Monterosso al Mare.

Our final hike revealed a delightful surprise to me. During my entire stay in Lucca, I drank delicious water from the city's fountains, my favorite being the one in Piazza del Salvatore (photo below). Little did I know that our walk would take us to the source of the water in a setting that could have been Bath, England. Eventually, we climbed to the top of the hill where an astronomical telescope is housed, then continued on to a rose-bedecked village named Vorno which lies on the Via Francigena, the ancient Christian pilgrim route to Rome. I discovered later that Via Francigena also runs by the village in which my grandfather was born and raised until he emigrated to Montana at the age of 12. How fortunate I feel to know two tiny points on this storied route, thanks to Parla e Cammina!

The ancient Roman acquaduct of Lucca still stands although no water flows through it now.