18
Sept Tuesday
Strada di Calabria is hot, dry and dusty
Autostrada in this heat is like an oven
the land is a tinderbox
This drive is longer than you think
workmen salute the car
At Reggio the sea is inviting
There is a commotion here
The ferry
to
cross
transgress to another place
Sicilia seems to be cooler
clouds
gathering over Etna
I head for Taormina,
drive through/past the tourists
Turn right at Fiumefreddo de Sicilia
At
last I am on the SS120, rising, heading inland - a mini epic before me
all curves
into the inside
Mount
Etna looms,
dark clouds gathering
distant rivulets of steam rising near its summit
the mountain does it again,
Rain,
this time thunder and lightening
Hood up (that cozy Morgan thing)
A small ridge tent on wheels
It pours, roads to rivers
As I drive into the hills I see the air through the rain
After Randoza the sun returns and the wet roads turn to silver
SS120
is great,
out into the mountains,
the land is
orange
ochre
this land astounds me
to Cesaro,
twisted,
curved
sometimes the road just runs out into gravel
the soil is grey green blue grey
like plasticine
this is somewhere out from anywhere
towns perched on mountains, medieval,
isolated
No apparent hotels,
squares
full of locals
the
inside of Sicilia
Wallace Arnold and McDonalds don’t enter
in
to it
