There is a breeze that blows around the house of my friend Caroline,up in the hills above Mercatale that can be just enough to stir the leaves from sunning themselves and like the soft breath that a mother blows across her baby’s forhead. I am having lunch here this afternoon while my group rests after so many days and nights of hard cooking, eating, and drinking red wine from a ceramic rooster.

There was talk of lunching in Castel Riggone and then touring through Preggio to look across the valleys of all the hills that you can see from there, but I think they just might round themselves up for a snooze in the grass. It is important to look out at the world from a high place for as far as the eye can see, but it is a whole other kind of traveling to feel the blades of grass bruising under the backs of your arms with nothing to do but lie there and consider the ants.