Abundance is everywhere

Celebrating a year of La Dolce Vita!

Time to celebrate!

It’s been more than a year of living in Italy. A year of…

Forging new friendships

Sunshine & sunlight & ice cream

Road trips back and forth to the UK

Sharing our new home with family and friends

Bureaucracy

Wildly abundant plants and blossoms

Yoga, singing & cacao

Also…unexpected visits to eye doctors, emergency departments (prontò soccorso), and physiotherapists.

And of course setting up the Bed and Breakfast.

On June 21st, SoIstizio dawned over on the other side of the Prino river. A good opportunity to get myself up and out, I thought as I tugged on my trainers and slammed the heavy wooden door behind me.

Purposefully slowing my steps, I crossed the dried up brook that drop steeply over rock. In the autumn, winter and spring it flows with icy water from snowmelt from the high Liguria Alpi. Sometimes, after heavy rainfall we would watch in awesomed silence, and listen to the thundering rushing of gallons and gallons of murkier brown frothy water, clearing out the gully of leafy debris. The dead rats too, brought home and left in the ally between our house and the neighbours before being carefully lifted and dropped into their gully grave. Now it’s all dried up for the summer.

It was 6am. There’s a track toward Bellisimi that runs behind the house and takes me directly through the neighbours olive terraces, affording views down to the sea. There’s a favourite spot I like to pause at, and today I clambered up away from the path, loudly stomping to alert any early morning slithery snake companions. The barking of wild deer earlier had been near, but the warbling frogs that accompany my sleep each night had stopped. The day is already light, before the sun had even risen.

I clambered up some scree and slate a short way then settled down on my chosen rocky outcrop as best I could. The accompanying sweet chords of some birds from earlier had faded. Almost no birdsong now. It felt like everything was holding its breath. But I didn’t. I breathed and breathed and breathed this dawning air of this longest day. The pause of quiet intimacy with the new day felt solo, but I wasn’t alone as everything around me shifted, swayed, rustled and settled.

The sensed brightening around the exact spot where the sun was nearly ready to appear came first. A glowing, then the majestic, slow reveal of orange into purples and then the clear azure of another day promising mind boggling heat. Sitting for a few moments longer the scene etched into my minds eye and, as is my habit, I thanked the universe for holding my place on Earth. Satisfied I’d given gratitude and paid homage to that wonderful consistency of the sun dawning, I pushed back up to my feet and wandered towards the track back home.

Beautiful.

A few days later, I heard that my niece had journeyed all the way to Stone Henge for the same. Same sun, different latitude. But for now, here I was in the tranquility of place I adopted as home and where I’ve never felt so at home as here.

Home.

Leaving our Sussex town and all its humming busyness behind to live in a tiny Italian hamlet is not everyone’s go to on their bucket list, but for myself and Marty it’s right up there.

Saluti a un’anno!