trekking
trek|king
pronuncia: /ˈtrɛkking/
sostantivo maschile

escursione impegnativa realizzata su sentieri montani, in genere di ridotta accessibilità

In other words, hiking

Last week I mentioned how we continue to distance socially. The dreaded Delta Covid-19 variant is working its way around Italy , and although almost everyone we know here is fully vaccinated, and that breakthrough infections are pretty rare, it’s better to be sure(r). So when I get antsy (it’s usually me. The Spartan Woman is surreally happy with her own company), instead of checking out a town/winery/restaurant/museum, we’ve taken walks in the country. It doesn’t mean we’re total hermits; I was happy to bump into a friend at the local bar when we had a post-walk cappuccino. But we’ve cut down on socializing.

Happily, one of the benefits of living in a region like Umbria is that it’s mostly rural and that means we’re near everything from lakes to rivers to rolling hills to the mountains that form the backbone of the Italian peninsula, the Apennines. And Italians have embraced hiking and being outdoors in general to an enormous degree. That means well-maintained and well-marked trails almost everywhere. We have a couple of trailheads right down the road from our house, but we wanted to take a ride Tuesday, too. (For some reason, it’s always a Tuesday. )

So off we went to the felicitously named Monte Cucco (say “kook-koh”). The mountain is on the border between Umbria and our neighbor, Le Marche (lay MAR-kay), and at 1566 meters high, is the centerpiece of a national park. It’s maybe 45 minutes from us normally, though a detour due to a closed section of highway slowed us down a little. It’s amazing how different an area that close to us can look. Maybe they’ve decided to go with that mountain resort look on purpose, but one of the towns at the base of the mountain, Sigillo, has a strong Alpine vibe. The buildings have roofs with more pitch than usual around here, for example.

You hang a right to an unassuming street but with the all-important brown sign indicating a Big Deal Tourist Attraction—the Monte Cucco park—and once past some apartment buildings, you climb up the usual (for here) mountain road, complete with switchbacks and occasionally bereft of Armco barriers.

We found ourselves, as we did two years ago, in the middle of what looked like an Alpine hideaway. There were a few campers, a shower/bathroom building, and a rustic hotel-restaurant. Picnic tables are spread throughout the area; just right for us because we brought sandwiches and fruit. We did not bring warm clothes, though. Although it was warm down in the lowlands, up on the mountain we felt an unusual thing–cool crisp air. We momentarily envied the young couple we saw wearing windbreakers.

Then we hiked. Our kids bought us trekking poles and this was our inaugural hike using them. Where have they been all my life? What seemed dangerously vertical two years ago now was an easy walk. Sure, we used our arms more, but it was a small change compared to the huge benefit. Plus, we’ve shed our Covid-19 extra kilos (don’t ask about the other kilos that hang around stubbornly), so traipsing up and down hills doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

This year, we took a left turn—there are two main trails in this part of the park, called the Val di Ranco. At various points I couldn’t sworn I was on a trail in New York’s Catskills, or even on our little Staten Island. Most people don’t picture dense woods and Italy together. But believe me, they exist. I like to think of old-growth forests—and this is one, judging by the lack of low dense shrubbery—as a sort of natural green cathedral, and the paths in the valley fit that description nicely.

[continues]

We weren’t alone. Every now and then we heard the murmur of the Central Italian dialect. If you don’t listen carefully to the words, it’s like a running brook of voices. At a couple of points, a fearless teenaged boy on the mountain bike passed in the opposite direction. He reined in his leaping style to avoid us. At another point we saw a young family group—parents and young girls—walking down a precipitous slope with the nonchalance of someone walking down Madison Avenue. At one point, we thought that the path looped around back to where we started because we saw the same kid on his bike twice. We were right, sort of. We did loop back near the parking area, but we were about 30 meters or about 100 feet above it.

So we turned around and retraced our steps. Soon we heard footsteps behind us—decidedly non-human footsteps. We turned to see a beautiful mare and her foal out for a little stroll. They were too used to humans to be wild. After some sottovoce encouragement—she was guarding her baby—the two horses passed us and were soon our of sight.

After lunch at one of the picnic tables—sandwiches and a caprese salad and fruit—we got back into the car and headed up to one of the peaks. I’ve decided that my main job for the rest of the summer is to get to all the mountain peaks around here. We passed a herd of cattle—how do they get up here?—and found the parking area. We’d been here two years ago and it all looked as expected. But we did not expect to see the green-blue of the Adriatic Sea shimmering in the distance, past the coastal flatlands.

That reminds me. Gotta get to the beach one of these days.