Monte Gariglione is the tallest peak in the Sila, topping out at 1765m. The mountain refuge where I’m spending the night isn’t quite that high, but it’s close, and given that I couldn’t be bothered to start a fire, I’m feeling the cold of that elevation as I clumsily type up this reflection.
It wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate to suggest that the day’s biggest highlight was breakfast. Along with the aforementioned scrambled eggs, I was delivered fried provolone (a great surprise), aged parmigiano, a fresh baked croissant, two equally fresh rolls of bread, several kinds of yogurt, a large saucer filled with fruit, a cappuccino and a thermos filled with coffee. An incredible spread, along with a warm send-off by my host, with one last attempt to cram some more food into my pack.
The morning ascent, which involved a dicey scramble through stickerbushes, was singularly oriented towards a rare treat–a lake! I haven’t seen one of those in quite a while. Of course, it’s not a natural lake. Instead, Lago Ampollino was the first artificial reservoir ever constructed in the Sila area, with shovels down shortly before World War I and then a long, slow dig to its completion in 1927. It feeds three different power stations, the first being where I started out, in San Giovanni in Fiore, before eventually completing its journey as irrigation water closer to the coast.
Whatever political consensus existed when the dam was first built has broken in recent years, as a growing public outcry has surrounded the electricity company A2A’s “drinking up” of the lake. A funny thing happened after the dam was first established–people were drawn to the phenomenon of a mountain lake. Like me, they were attracted to the novelty and beauty of the scene in Calabria, and before long what had been a temporary worker residence was transformed into the holiday town of Trepido, complete with hotels and vacation rentals. Even now, though, it’s clear just how far the surface level has dropped, with corresponding declines in tourist interest. There are other, potentially more damaging consequences of these developments as well, including–according to the mayor of Crotonei–”a lack of water storage for releases to the Land Reclamation Consortium; a reduction in the vital water levels of various existing streams, rivers, and creeks; and objective difficulty in extracting water resources by firefighting vehicles during the period of maximum fire risk alert.”
Fortunately for me, one hotel bar remained operational and in close proximity to the trail’s entry point, and this was my lone shot at a coffee along the way–not that I really needed it, after that morning bounty! The barista, friendly as he was, shot me down when I asked about using the wifi. “It’s a complicated process,” he said, “that requires registration at check-in.” “Yes, security is important,” I replied, as I typed the hotel’s name in as a password, all lower case, and immediately gained access.
And then it was back into the woods, marching through shedding pine trees and thirsty ferns, deeper and deeper into the heart of the Sila mountains. I might have characterized it as anonymous, meditatively monotonous, if not for one distinguishing feature. Deep in the woods, seemingly cut off from every other thread of Calabria, were the crumbled, humbled ruins of an old Basilian convent. Alongside those meager rocky reminders was a large crucifix, set atop an intriguing metal base that looked like a cross between a giant industrial cog and a scrunchee. I’m sure that’s the vision they were going for.
Regardless, at its base was a small plaque with this message: “This cross on the Sila mountains indicates that the heights of Calabria must represent our yearning for hope, the beneficial nature of work and our common and generous commitment to peace.” There’s a rejoinder in that, perhaps, to A2A, though it was established at least two decades before the great sucking down began in earnest.
If my day began with hospitality, it ended in the same fashion. Andrea, a volunteer with the Club Alpino Italiano–the group responsible for caring for trails and refuges all across the peninsula–had been coordinating my stay in the mountain refuge at Gariglione. I had originally told him that I expected to arrive around 5pm. From Lago Ampollino, I messaged him that I was ahead of schedule and would likely arrive an hour earlier, if convenient for him. I had also asked about water, as he warned me that the refuge’s water supply was broken; he mentioned I might find a fountain on my way in. I didn’t. In any case, I arrived even earlier, around 3:15. That’s my particular cross to bear–chronic, annoying earliness. But to my great pleasure, Andrea pulled in just fifteen minutes later. And after introducing himself, he smiled and said, “I’ve brought water.”
The refuge is a long, skinny building–a one time shelter for dairy cattle that was retrofitted a decade ago. I’ve spent the past three hours in the kitchen area, moving through one cup of tea after another, while marveling at the solid wifi that is available to me here. Eventually, I’ll have to settle in for a cold night’s sleep, but there’s a bed, a pillow, and a cupboard full of blankets to complement my sleeping bag.
It’s crazy. Over the past fifteen months and change, I’ve spent roughly ten of those months hiking. A part of me wondered coming into this if it would get old after a while, if I might be taking on too much of a good thing. And the answer is no, not by a long shot, not by a bit. Here’s to one more month.
