Due giorni più a Roma

Two more days to Rome. I am sitting at the table in a room in Compagnano di Roma, an apartment really, facing a bricked terrace and a garden, sipping a cup of Verbena tea.

My pace has slowed considerably, not my walking speed, but the speed of my movements when not walking, and my thinking speed. On the other hand, the last week has been a flash. The days seem to have rushed by. I've run into a number of other pilgrims – some I've already mentioned to you, others not – but in the roughly forty hours I've spent on the road since I last posted, I would be surprised if I've spent more than two hours walking and talking with others. I have been walking alone. I have been staying alone. 

During this trip, I've occasionally stayed in spedali, the pilgrim hostels. No longer. The various guidebooks and lodging directories I have access to, in English, German and Italian, those I am carrying on my phone, and those other pilgrims have shared with me, paint a distressing picture. It doesn't bother me that many of the hostels do not have beds, just mats on the floor. I stayed in a number of those during my three walks to Compostela. I met Patrick in one of those. I had one of my most significant coincidental experiences in one such hostel just off the Camino Frances, an event that must have an incredibly low probability of occurrence, that a person of faith might take as a sign. It was so improbable, I still shake my head at it. People I tell it to react with pelle d'oca, goosebumps. 

No, it is that the guidebooks describe the hostelers as gruff, unpleasant, and the hostels themselves as less than attractive, dark, dirty. The pilgrims that have stayed in them confirm those assessments. The wonderful hostel in Formello is an exception, but that's not one of my stopping points. So I've opted for leased bedrooms, monasteries, and B&B's. Sometimes the latter means cello-wrapped cakes and zwieback for your breakfast, with the fixings to make your own coffee. Sometimes it means it big buffet breakfasts. But other times it means gracious hospitality, a well crafted omelet and a real attempt at friendship. Thinking of the latter brings a warm smile to my face.

I've had reasonably good luck staying at monasteries and convents. One should certainly not expect any measure of extravagance, but the generally tiny or shabby or somewhat in disrepair rooms and public areas are often balanced by quiet spaces, a chance to shed the fatigue of the day, places to relax and think. Sometimes they offer more. 

A few nights ago, I stayed at the Regina Pacis monastery outside of Vetralla. It's not an old, medieval structure as some of them are. It looks like it might have been built sometime in the last century, but it could be a bit older than that. Only thirteen nuns are in residence. There's nothing really remarkable about it all, except for sorella Mary Bernadette. 

The sisters at Regina Pacis are cloistered in silence from the outside world but, as in other monasteries that take guests, there is usually one sister who interfaces with them and may, as necessary, speak with them when she brings dinner and breakfast, or when she stamps the pilgrim's credential, or takes payment for the stay. Mary Bernadette is, as she says, from "the Congo." Her glistening deep cocoa skin is luxuriant, reminding me of that rich dark cup of hot chocolate one gets at Angelina's in Paris, the oils collecting and shimmering along the surface, almost hypnotizing you. She must be in her late twenties but it is hard to tell in the wimple and the almost floor length black and white habit. Thirteen years in Italy, away from her home, she is quiet, proper, stiffly functional as she wheels the rumbling food cart into the dining room. But that reserved demeanor cracks, her face turns into a wide grin, and she bubbles when she hears the language of her youth as I tell her in French that though I speak a little of her language, I will not because it would utterly confuse my already poor Italian. She begins to talk in rapid French, effervescent, and then, understanding what I had said, in Italian, and she is no longer that reserved young woman but a happy, almost jumping young girl.

I had a terrible night's sleep at the Regina Pacis. As soon as I lay down in bed my back started itching and then my entire body. At first I thought it was insects of one sort or another and I applied an ultra strong tropical repellent that I purchased a number of years ago in Switzerland. The itching continued to worsen. I then thought it might be hives or some other allergic reaction to some cherry tomato-sized plums that were served at dinner. Thinking the insect repellent might be aggravating the situation I towelled myself off with cold water from the sink in the bedroom. No help. For hours I dozed briefly and then woke, tossing and looking for a more comfortable position. Finally, I concluded that it must be the bed linens themselves and I pulled my silk sleep sack from my backpack, sunk down deep into it so that not an inch of skin was touching anything other than silk. In the deep dark of the night, I was able to put a few hours of sleep together. The next morning I mentioned it to another of the pilgrims who was staying at the monastery. He too had experienced that hairshirt of a penitent's bed.

As I made my way from Bolsena to Viterbo to Vetralla to Compagnano di Roma, the paths taken since I last wrote have included another section of the Via Cassia Consolare, well more than a mile of it. I am convinced that whatever modern man may do to this planet, that road will remain as it did 2,200 years ago and still be functional, if there are any of us around to make use of it. Every pilgrim I've spoken with who has walked it is in awe of its age, condition and beauty. I've walked through acres upon acres of hazelnut orchards, past Etruscan tombs, medieval towers hidden among the trees, through forests alongside brooks that make the sweetest music as they tumble from rock to pool, and throw diamonds as they move from shadow to sunlight. I've smelled and seen sulfur springs as they bubble up naturally in this region of terme. I've been surprised when I turned a bend, exited a forest and found a Roman amphitheater, not built, but cut into tufa and just next to it an Etruscan necropolis and next to that a two-thousand year old Mithraeum, no external feature indicating its presence, but inside the classical architectural elements remaining, three naves, long benches cut from tufa, and a pit in the floor to collect the blood sacrifice. And on the ceiling, crystal salts sparkled from a still recognizable painted St. Michael, his oval face jutting out from the otherwise smoothed, arched ceiling dating from when that pagan temple to Mithras was taken over and consecrated to the Christian faith. 

But I've also walked on a lot of asphalt, only a couple of miles of it on busy thoroughfares. On occasion the trees on either side reach across and shadow the walker from the intense sun, but far more often I glance ahead and see long stretches of sunlight between the momentary umbral relief cast by two lonely trees. Much of the day I am walking on near-white rock, pulverized to the consistency of cinder, that reflects the sunlight and radiates the heat up into what would otherwise be the cooling shadow of my wide brimmed Tilley. At the end of each day I am obligated to make a long climb, steepening as I progress, to a hilltop village, or town, or city, Etruscan or Roman in origin, repurposed in the Medieval.

There I find my place for the night, another day closer to Rome.