A walk across Italy offers an excellent excuse–not that any such excuse is required–to spend time rereading Italy’s greatest writer, Italo Calvino. So my journey began with If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, which felt more than appropriate for the occasion. The novel’s conceit is a joyride through postmodernist narration, with the author first addressing the reader directly before yielding to the text of the novel proper, only to discover that a printing error has resulted in the replacement of the intended text with a Polish one. Further hijinks ensue.
The two readers of the novel, needless to say, are not amused. Like Lucy and the narrative football, they keep getting sucked into one story after another, only to discover that has been yanked from their grasp yet again.
Such a tale feels all the more apropos as I embark on another long journey, knowing as I proceed that, though I might set forth with a certain narrative flow in mind for the trip, each day will inevitably impose its own authorial imprint, reminding me that I am, in many regards, just another character at the mercy of larger forces.
And at the same time, the setting around me, while seemingly consistent, will shift continuously, reworking itself not merely by the day but sometimes by the hour. Over these first two days of walking, from Matera to Castellaneta, the changes weren’t as consistently distinct as in Calvino; instead, they pinged back and forth between two primary sorts of scenery.
Leaving Matera, I passed through the sprawling modern town and its suburb, before emerging once more atop the spectacular canyon. That passing was all too brief, though, and I bemoaned the loss, even if the GPS gave me hope for a return later. Instead, the landscape smoothed out into gentle ripples, mostly blanketed in lush, green grass and occasionally slashed with stone-piled walls and sprinkled with yellow and orange wildflowers. Almost immediately, human habitation faded to a minimum. Rain preceded my arrival and proof of that showed up in the clay-heavy track I followed, which clung to my feet like mud crampons, periodically erupting into clods. Giant cacti sometimes line the road, a rare reminder in this cold that I’m as far south as I am–nearly as far south as I’ve ever been for an extended hike.
Soon olive trees interrupt the waving grass, their thick bases and narrow branches speaking to their age–so many centuries of pruning having led them to this point. Behind, the landscape is literally cut open to reveal an abandoned quarry, the etch marks still delineating where blocks of rock were removed. The Cammino Materano has led me on a mix of trails and quiet roads, but it suddenly deposits me on one with actual auto traffic, and it’s a jarring shift in focus, as narrow shoulders, blind turns, and confident Italian drivers result in a walker needing to take greater initiative to ensure his safety.
Ginosa looms overhead. The effect of white-painted villages lining hilltop ridges is to inspire visions of snow-topped mountains, but not a flake is to be found. Instead, I wind a circuitous approach into the center, finally stumbling across a grocery store and a large piazza in which to eat most of my newly acquired goods. I’m soon joined by an audience–five stray dogs, who demonstrate their tact and good graces by reclining ten meters away, a respectful distance from which to monitor any random acts of spillage or charity. The modern town of Ginosa, set in neat rows, transitions at that point into the more compact older town, with tighter lanes leading to the castle-in-name-only, a clock tower, and the church, lurking below. Lurking even lower, I discover on my descent, is another canyon, hiding just behind the old town. I am entering the Parco Naturale Regionale Terra delle Gravine, which spans a remarkable distance eastward from here. Once again, to my delight, I discover a network of extensive cave dwellings; unlike Matera, though, these only now seem to be receiving any sort of attention insofar as redevelopment goes. Instead, the landscape feels distinctly prehistoric, with a thin medieval veneer imposed over the top.
I proceed through the base of the canyon for a kilometer or so, before the Materano takes an abrupt left turn, cutting almost straight up the side of the canyon, though an admittedly more forgiving angle than the sheer cliff on the opposing side. So up I go, tired legs reinvigorated with newfound purpose, until I’m back on the canyon top, cutting inland away from the beautiful scenery. I loop through a large farm complex, complete with a Punto Acqua for Matterano pilgrims and a rustic campground at the back, before emerging onto a wooded fitness track, utterly abandoned this time of year. I finally find what I’m looking for–flat, smooth ground, tree cover, and even a sit-up bench that functions as a rustic recliner. This is my home for the night. Alas, nothing can be perfect–in the not-too-far-distance, a quarry filled with dogs explodes in barks on a semi-regular basis, just loud enough to distract. Don’t they ever get thirsty?
A semi-restful night that concluded with very cold feet gave way to a pleasant morning, once I shook circulation back to my toes, as I staggered out of the woods and back into grassy fields. The most striking thing about farm country here–and that is pretty much everything outside of the ravine and the ridge tops–is that the rare farmhouses are often a) quite large and b) fortified. I am reminded later of the proximity of this region to the sea, even if that’s beyond my sight for the moment, and thus the peril that brought of pirate raids. Indeed, medieval villagers often fled to the canyon’s caves for shelter from attacks, while agricultural landlords took protection into their own hands. My mind is focused, though, on taking a cappuccino into my own hands, and for that I have Laterza to look forward to, just a couple hours away, already visible atop its hill.
I enter Laterza directly through its historic core, and the twisty little lanes defy the gps. Unconcerned, I wander contentedly, circling past old fountains, a church, and any number of whitewashed private homes. Finally, I emerged in the more modern piazza, where I find a bar to caffeinate and chomp down on a brioche. For a brief moment, I have the narrow space to myself, but it’s soon filled with four men, arriving together, all drinking single shots of black coffee, and muttering about something indecipherable to my ears. I elbow my way back up to the bar, drop my three euros, and push onward, my mission completed.
As in Ginosa, Laterza hid its canyon from view, but not for long. A giant, arching bridge spans the chasm, and soon I’m walking across, admiring the scene as I look back to see the city perched up against the cliff’s edge. Things only get better from there, though, as a footpath soon leads me to the opposing side of the canyon, proceeding for kilometer after kilometer just along the edge of the ravine. This is great for photos and terrible for pace, as I keep detouring five meters here, ten meters there, to reach another viewpoint that offers another somewhat distinct angle on the incredible scene. As I continue onward, though, I can already see the end in sight, as the high ridge I follow declines gradually and then plummets suddenly into a rich agricultural valley. A last stone building marks my turning point–abandoned, its front door open, and the interior clean enough, it would have made for a brilliant camp site–and then the descent begins in earnest.
Before long, I’m back in farm country, and to my delight I’m passing through orange trees, already laden with ripe fruit, and rows of similarly ripe broccoli. I’ve never seen broccoli in the field before, and the rainbow colored leaves first made me think I was looking at chard. And suddenly, the fields are interrupted by the greatest sight of all–five donkeys in a pen, all placid and relaxed, and more than happy to amble over to the fence for a visit.
My destination, Castellaneta, is already looming in the distance, on a ridge of its own. I am reminded again of how the eye can deceive; it looks like an eternity away, but it’s less than ten kilometers. I’m certainly not moving quickly by my standards, but it won’t take that much longer, and so I wind through the hills, transitioning soon after to paved roads for the remainder of the walk. I can’t complain; it has been almost exclusively footpaths to this point, and sometimes a little asphalt at day’s end makes the final kilometers easier. I’m sorry, though, to have left the spectacular canyons behind. This farm country is entirely pleasant in its own way, but the contrast of the two scenes has made these first two days remarkable.
Castellaneta follows a similar formula to the preceding towns–an unremarkable, grid-shaped modern town blending into its historic center. My hostel is located in the heart of that twisting, turning old town, and I might have passed it if not for the two men standing on a balcony above it, discussing the renovation work going on in one of their homes. They greeted me warmly, at which point I saw the hostel’s front door below them–a happy convenience made even better when they offered to phone the owners for me to come and let me in.
The two owners of the hostel are huge advocates for the Cammino Materano and they were effusive in their greeting, chatting with me about my pilgrimage experience and their own. When words failed, gestures sufficed, and even then a show-and-tell was even better. At one point, as he stumbled in explaining tomorrow’s walk to me, one owner waved me out the front door and led me down the road, forking down a narrow alley only to emerge at a belvedere, a view point, that revealed another spectacular canyon, plunging directly downward from the town walls. They hide those things everywhere around here!
I didn’t have much time for sightseeing once two days of laundry were completed, but I paused outside the Museo Valentine to ponder the name, which I had already encountered a few times by this point. I later learned of Castellaneta’s most famous son, Rodolfo Guglielmi, who later became Rudy Valentine after he emigrated to the US in 1913, became a dancer in 1915, and finally emerged as a movie star following his first appearance in 1918. Here’s what the town’s tourism materials have to say about him: “A Mediterranean beauty with magnetic eyes, he embodied the fantasies and dreams of millions of women, performing characters (like a sheikh, an aristocrat, a matador, a viveur) who made him known as the sex symbol of those years, so much that he was given the title of Latin Lover.”
You be the judge. As for me, it’s 6:30am and there’s a canyon waiting.
