Kent,
Jon and I have been invited to go hiking with our professor,
Franco, and his friend Paolo. Paolo is from the, city of
Sulmona, resting in a valley in Umbria at the foot of the
Apennine Mountains, where we attend class every morning.
He doesn't speak any English, and Franco refuses to speak
anything but Italian when he is with Paolo, so our hike
has turned into another impromptu Italian lesson.
Despite
the fact that Paolo is smoking away at a newly rolled cigarette,
he hikes without pause or fatigue. The sun does its best
to peek through the canopy of leaves, but it only touches
our shoulders in mottled and subdued patches.
We hike
for an hour, speaking little. I take up the rear, allowing
myself to fall behind just enough to be alone with my own
thoughts. The forest smells moist and healthy. I take deep
breaths, filling every square inch of lung space, absorbing
the sounds of birds, breeze and footsteps on soft dirt through
every pore, hardly blinking, soaking up shadow and sun with
my eyes.
Paolo
pauses. He waits for me to catch up, and says in a hushed
tone, “Questo e la Cattedrael.” This is the
cathedral.
Tree
trunks stand as columns on the hills to either side of us.
There are no bushes, no flowers, no ferns or groundcover
of any kind, only low grass and shiny gray pillars reaching
straight up, supporting an archway of limbs overhead. The
lowest branches are twenty feet above, creating a dome that
rivals the pantheon in grandeur. The breeze and sun combine
to paint images in the canopy that not even Michelangelo
could have conceived. Paolo is silent, his eyes closed,
head tilted back, smiling.
"Se
dio non esiste qui, dio non esiste, " he says.
