Day 15 – Torchiarolo-Brindisi – 27km
I often think of beauty as something fragile, delicate, perpetually vulnerable to a destruction that would not only shatter the object itself, but the aesthetic quality along with it. And yet, nearly everything that is beautiful in and around Brindisi today has been trashed at some point. The bedraggled olive groves of past stages largely […]
Days 13 & 14 – Cannole-Torchiarolo – 69km
What defines us, what stands out as our greatest source of pride, can all too often bring about our fall. It’s a slow, leisurely morning as I set forth from Cannole, complete with two hard boiled eggs and a large bag of dried figs, courtesy of Fabio and Lucia. I pause in Carbieno to grab […]
Days 11 & 12 – Santa Maria di Leuca-Cannole – 81km
When I set out to walk across the USA, I had to rewire my brain and my feet. There’s a rhythm of life on pilgrimage, an utterly delightful one, that a trans-US walk can’t hope to replicate. The country is just too damn big. Admittedly, it wasn’t too dramatic a change on the East Coast, […]
Day 10 – Specchia-Santa Maria di Leuca – 35km
I first reached the end of the world in 2004. I was excited, but also a little sad. After all, Finisterre, Spain marked the conclusion of my first Camino leading students, and so as the waters churned below in an unrelenting fury, my thoughts threatened to do the same, until I took a breath and […]
Day 9 – Gallipoli-Specchia – 42km
Live long enough to become a hypocrite. A blessing or a curse? It depends upon each of us, I suppose, and how earnestly we live. That said, I’ve come to appreciate a certain strain of hypocrite in recent years, one willing to reconsider tough stances and modify their position when the available evidence changes. There’s […]
Day 8 – Porto Cesareo-Gallipoli – 35km
I’ve had two consistent companions as I follow the coast southward through Puglia, both reminders of more violent pasts. The less striking, by design, are the pillboxes, only poking a meter or so above the ground. Built during World War II to fend off an Allied invasion, these pop up every handful of kilometers, generally […]
Days 6 & 7 – Taranto-Porto Cesareo – 85km
The people of Taranto are out in force on this Sunday morning, jogging along the coast in their brightest fitness apparel. By contrast, I’m lumbering along, still processing the croissant served at my breakfast that seemed to have been pumped full of a kilo of nutella. Add that to the list of things that shouldn’t […]
Day 5 – Crispiano-Taranto – 26km
When I set off this morning, I anticipated the first walk of the young trip oriented singularly towards the destination. Aside from Matera, none of the towns I’ve stayed in thus far exercised much of a gravitational pull; beyond a trip to the supermarket, I didn’t have concrete plans in mind for any of those […]
Tour d’Italia, Days 3 & 4 – Castellaneta-Crispiano – 56km
It’s a funny thing; I’ve been thinking about the Cammino Materano for months now, if not years, and yet I’ve nearly completed my walk on it now, at least for the time being. There’s one firm exception to that statement; I’ll detour onto a variant of the Via Ellenica in order to visit Alberobello when […]
Tour d’Italia, Days 1 & 2 – Matera-Castellaneta – 70km
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 […]