11 th September

Another one and a half hour climb up a steep hill for breakfast: I'm lying :I did have a Cappuccino and Pasta.
Very nice weather and just a little bit of the cold wind of yesterday left. The climb took me up to Monte Gazzaro, where the view was quite incredible. At about 270 degrees you could see as far as probably a100 km and this from a viewpoint that was only 1124 metres altitude.
This was the third day of a quite well know trek from Bologna to Florence and I hadn?t met a single other walker(ess) yet. But there was a sort of booklet, contained in a heavy tin box; lodged below a little bench surrounded by a brick wall just below the big cross that signalled the top of Monte Gazzaro. So I was very curious what the entries in this little guest book were and what day the last entry was from.
The booklet (dated February 01) was very full, and the last entry was from the just the day before. It might be that we were all headed the same way, but, I?m sure that in terms of probability, that some walker(ess)(es) must have been heading the FI-BO way and I should therefore have come across them.
Especially the chum with the paint pots that puts all those right and white lines on the trees the stones and whatever, so you don?t lose your way. But then maybe he?s a saint and just floats about without anybody noticing him. Or the one with the funny brush that is in charge of the two (vertical) yellow balls. (I?m talking about the ones from MAT – does this stand for: MORTE AL TURISTA??? Seriously, they?ve done a great job on this 80km trek, because there are more opportunities of losing your way than there are to getting it right. And I never got lost seriously.
I will like to remind you that this part of my Venice to Rome walk is called VIA DEGLI DEI, and this is mainly due to the fact of the association of these mountaintops to certain more or less ancient deities. There is no explanation in my guide which deity Monte Gazzaro was related to, but I am convinced that he must be one of those theological dictators that would punish you for having had any sort of experience of a pleasant nature (me contemplating the panorama of the hills heading towards) by destroying any sort of lingering pleasure you might have with some divine punishmen..
A quick walk through some very light woods and then came something that my guide book defined as a few rocks one should walk down with a lot of caution, especially if the ground was slippery.
It was an extremely steep bit down hill with hardly anything hang on to, with a fall down of some 30 metres of rocks on one side and a slope of leaves through some woods one down to some uncertain destination.
When I read my guidebook, I seriously thought that this was another bit of the Italians being overcautious.
No, I rephrase that: I hoped they were being overcautious, because I really don?t like heights that much. I would not have gone down that bit if it had been slippery. I was also wondering, while going down, how my chum with his paint pots had managed to put the signs on the trees that were available without slipping down the hill: one of the more useful bit of paintings I?ve seen in my life.
If ever he (or her: whoever spent some time on the bastard side of Monte Gazzaro with some paint pots) reads this, would (s)he please send me his(her) address, e-mail or whatever so I can thank them for their job personally!
The rest of the walk was now downhill in more pleasant slopes for the next five hours.



Chestnut trees, oaks and their smells bits of pine woods getting warmer more smells and eventually arriving out of the woods into the open towards something that really looked and smelt like Tuscany. I can?t really tell you what it is but it?s a pleasant warmth and dryness of the air. White paths, ginestra, smell of pines as well, dust, very sahrp contrasts, the very dark green trees and the dark shadows. The light is gold. I was looking at it and smelling it and for the first time I thought I should get my DALER-ROWNEY paint box out or at least keep it till next week and not give up the hope I might actually use it. Will see. I want to do it, but am looking for the right angle. Inch Allah, maybe one of the funny gods of the VIA DEGLI DEI will hit me on the head.

Two things happened when I arrived at San Piero a Sieve at about 14h30:



This is a war of symbols, virtual representation in which the civil victims, who?s
relatives should receive more than just televisual sympathy, because they are the involuntary peons of this tragic event.
It does leave, though, a very bitter taste of ?reality show?.
Whatever anybody talks-shows, it had to happen: the projection of their own strength and the insistence of the American arrogance towards the rest of the world are certainly not foreign to this tragedy.

Terrorism is the abject negative of what (quite often) is an abject reality.