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Looking out across the Umbrian landscape last nigth, Sally asked me to describe what I saw. “The moon floats above the ridge of the hill, just a sliver of orange reflecting the last remnant of the sunset and casting a shadow across its darker side – suspended and glowing in the evening sky. Stretching above, the cosmos beckons…Orion and the hare, Venus rising to the left, Jupiter lighting the way to stars beyond counting. Toward the east, the Big Dipper rises, its handle pointing downward toward the flickering lights across the valley – that’s Viterbo, 15 miles across the valley, rising walled and ancient on its on hillside. Lights flicker in unison on windmills cutting silently into the night sky and the treeline on the ridge gives a unsettled texture to the night as the wind blows softly.”
Sitting here this morning, ad orientem, watching the sun rise and listening to the endless calls of birds floating in and among the olive groves below me, I feel the peace of the countryside. Rows of lavender roll down the hill meeting the brook below, somewhere beyond my sight. I can now see the undulating hills climbing to that ridge from last night, a small stone barn sitting atop, empty and ancient. The bats, active early in the evening return to the eave of this treehouse cabin – i am sitting too close to his nest and he flits about me until I move and he can comfortably go home. Across the valley, the walls of Viterbo glint in the rising sun and I try to imagine a thousand years of medieval, walled city states, tribally warring for dominance across these valleys.
Earlier in the evening, sitting in a restaurant carved out of a rocky hillside in a walled village called Tuscania (tusk-on-ya), Sally and I reflected on nearly four weeks of travel in Italy. Pilgrimage is a fitting term for this journey of basilicas, shrines, crypts, and myriad other holy sites. For nearly 2000 years, Christianity has permeated this land, leaving traces both grand and humble across a country of almost 60 million people getting ready to celebrate 80 years as a republic on June 2, 2026. Walking around the headquarters of the government of the Vatican State, the world’s smallest country, we were given a glimpse of the mingling of old and new as we met its President, Sr. Raffaela Petrini, just steps from St. Peter’s Basilica, built in the 16th century atop the remains of St. Peter who was crucified on the same hill in 63 A.D. Old and new in a way difficult to imagine.
The sun is now casting its rays brightly across the tops of the olive trees below me. The deck of our treehouse sits just above and I can see the rows of lavender climbing the hills to the ridgetop. My eyes are taken to two relatively small construction sites where the pieces of unassembled windmills lay. Old and new. In one way, the white metal windmills dotting the landscape seem a brutally mechanical interruption to the bucolic beauty of the valley. And yet, they seem to also fit into the paradoxical pattern of a land that has seen so much old and new pass across its vistas. History, contrast, and tension seem built into the marble, stone, and vegetation of its being.
Tomorrow, we’ll make the trek back to the bustle of Rome as we begin the journey home. Home, the comfortable place of the known and the safe. Passing the scene of a very modern traffic accident yesterday, I had the fleeting thought of how terrible it would be to suffer such an accident so far from home; as if suffering an accident could in any way be more comfortable in your own zip code. But there is a dark truth in that – the thought of suffering somehow seems more tolerable on our home turf. It’s a rather odd way to glimpse the comfort of home. For my part, I’ll just be glad to return to our loves who we miss so very much when we’re away.
Wherever this post finds you today. I hope you’re home, at peace, and joyful for the way this day meets you and the promise it offers.
