mymidlifegapyear: Heading to the mountains...

I’ve only been going a short while on the autostrada towards Milan when a light appears on the dashboard of my near new Fiat 500 hire car.

It looks at first glance like the seat belt light so I remove my heavy bag from the front passenegr seat thinking that the “smart” technology has registered a person sitting there and the light is extinguished. A few minutes later there are 3 caution lights and I realise it is the airbag indicator. A few metres more and the whole dashboard lights up and messages flash and a warning indicators, but the clincher is that the speed indicator goes into cardiac arrest and then suddenly registers zero!

There’s no answer at Hertz and the SOS phone along the autostrada doesn’t work (glad it was not a real emergency!) but eventually a very long time later a tow truck comes to take me to who knows where.

It is probably not wise of the tow truck driver to greet me rudely (after I had been waiting for a very long time and had been given a very long run around by the people over the phone) and soon there is a right old shouting match going on on the side of that road!

However, (in typically Italian way), once we both calm down and see things from the others point of view, there is no rancour, we are good friends and he offers me coffee in his small office, until a taxi arrives to take me to Verona airport (a 130 euro taxi fare away) to pick up another car.

It took longer than expected, but finally I have reached my destination.

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It feels like the bells are singing me home.

It is 7am and I am on my way to San Patrizio, a sanctuary above the small town of Vertova in Val Seriana not far from Bergamo. I have come here for a few days before going to Assisi for my “meditation retreat” because I know that it is here that my Mum’s spirit will be, soaring high above the mountains that she loved so much.

This place is filled with sadness for me; the energy of people with unfulfilled dreams and regret, small town pettiness, family secrets, scandals and tragedy and complex painful secrets and memories of my own, a young man I knew committing suicide, and another young woman’s life traumatised when she accidently killed a motorcylist.

And yet there are people here I love, with ready and unending hospitality and mountain spirit, tough souls with brittle exteriors and huge hearts.

And I know my Mum was really happy here, returning time and time again, reliving carefree childhood memories of getting into mischief, stealing fruit from the trees of an old priest and sneaking out at night to whizz down the steep roads on her bicycle. Here she regained the energy of her youth and was filled with a young person’s curiosity and dreams.

One particular memory would always make her happy. It was of walking or being carried by her beloved father to San Patrizio.

It is a beautiful morning as I walk up the steep track towards the sanctuary. Low cloud hangs in the space between the mountains and below me I can see the river snaking through the valley. I have the track to myself and am enjoying the blissful silence, broken only by the church bells when they ring. Somehow each time I pass a church (three so far) the bells have started ringing and they seem to be accompanying me on my walk.

I am reminded of one of my favourite books, “Songlines”, by Bruce Chatwin which comes closest to explaining (in the way I have since heard Aboriginal people themselves explain to me) the importance of and connection to land of Indigenous Australians.

I feel a strong spiritual connection to a number of places that I have spent some time in, most near the water or with a bird’s eye view. This place is not one of them and yet as I look up towards the sanctuary a strange thing happens. It is hard to put into words but the feeling and sensation was quite clear; a blurring of time and space and merging with an image of my mother and grandfather and a familiarity and sense of peace.

Another strange thing happened when I got there.

I was doing my qigong (just like this guy on youtube who does this crazy little dance all over the world, I have done my qigong in a whole lot of interesting places all over the world so now I can add a Roman Catholic sanctuary to my list) when I heard someone say “Sorry, but I have to lock up now”

Turns out that had I arrived a few minutes later I would not have been able to get in, and had he not seen me I would have been locked in for a week until the sanctuary was opened again! Interesting…

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17^th September 2011

This week has flown by with a series of unexpected happenings, curious coincidences and interesting connections (anyone interested ask me over a glass of red wine particularly about strange orbs on photos, dates on a tombstone, white butterflies, crystal therapy and people I didn’t know stopping me in the street)

I have returned to one of my ancetral homes and been able to look back on the past with fresh eyes. Some of the sadness that I felt here before has gone. Perhaps it was the beautiful weather or realising that some of the sadness was my own, but somehow gently tracing the sadness to its source has allowed it to disappear.

People have told me their thoughts and fears and memories, many of them deeply touched by my mother’s love and loss.

I have laughed with old friends and made some new ones. I have visited Bergamo and sat in the elegant café Balzer where my grandparents used to meet and I have felt Mum’s spirit in the mountains she loved so much. Above all it was good to spend time in one of her favourite places (Val Vertova with its pretty waterfall). I wish I could have enjoyed it with her, but I guess in some ways I already have.

Ansaet! (arrivederci in my Mum’s dialect)

I am now Assisi bound!

Mon x