I'll start by traveling a few months back in time. It's fitting that in time-traveling, the place we're traveling to is a timeless one, where the days don't seem to be connected one to the other, where children and their parents seem locked in that relationship forever, and of course, where I felt so heavily on my being the undeniable presence of the now. Time, in this place, was once again a construct for me, and one without much utility.
The place was a town called Orta. Cradled between the curvaceous foothills of the Italian Alps, it has a lake so blue that everyone in the city seems to carry something of it in their eyes. It is a deep, dark blue, but the bottom of the lake can easily be seen at even fifteen meters of depth. The clarity of the water is unrivaled in my life of late. The town of Orta, for it is a town more than a city, and the Lago di Orta sit in the far northwestern province of Novara. It is a tiny province full of vineyards and small farms. Novara's capital of the same name is accessible by car or by regional train from Milan. You won't be surprised to know that generally speaking the Milanese are not fond of these regional trains, and the train schedules are set in a way that requires an often lengthy transfer in Novara if one is to catch the even smaller (though more comfortable and calm) train north to the tiny Orta-Miasino station. It was, therefore, to my great delight that anyone smelling even remotely of Milan was not to be found north of Novara.
The true name of the town for many centuries has been Orta San Giulio. One gets the impression that all the frazioni, hamlets, that exist around Orta as one ascends the hill have been there forever. Tiny Legro with its vineyards and pigpens; Corconio to the south seemingly angry at the lake for some past injustice, and the many villages of Imola along the road to Gozzano. Each town could be nowhere else in this world - for just over any nearby hill it would be a different town altogether.
And what of the nature of the town? Does not a town draw heavily from the people it nourishes? Yes, of course, and no. Orta cares not from which century its visitors come, from which distant lands or which languages they speak; it cares only to receive them as an old mother opens her home to her lost and dispirited child. Orta is a brook filled with timeless water, and there is plenty of it for all to drink. Sure, most of the tourists are slow-moving and old. And the young tourists grow bored with the silence of the lake, its stillness and calm. They can't stand to believe that the mountains and the lake have agreed to each other's terms so wholeheartedly! And the wandering man (especially when young) will flee when he is too long near such flawless love between to beings, he will flee to find it on his own terms.
I have, until now, left out the two most iconic and powerful energies in Orta San Giulio. They have both shaped and reshaped its thousands of years of human history, captivated the hundreds of generations of humans - and more than once brought them to tears.
I'll mention first the tiny mass of rock in the middle of the lake, the Isola San Giulio. It is a small island about three hundred meters long and one hundred and fifty meters wide. Sitting there, in the middle of the lake only a thousand meters or so from the docks in Orta San Giulio, the island asks questions, begs attention, but quietly and without presumption. Who is San Giulio, you ask? He was the patron Saint of Novara, Saint Julius. It is said that Julius and his brother Julian were sent from Rome by Theodosius I to destroy pagan altars, and to build churches. They built many. His brother Julian is buried in the ninety-ninth chapel they built, in nearby Gozzano. Many small chapels have been built on the island over the centuries, and now buildings cover it entirely. Famously, the Basilica di San Giulio, the hundredth church built by the brothers, is in the center of the island today.
From the island you might be so overtaken by the calmness of the blue waters, the curiosity of the small birds, and the distant snow-capp'd peaks of the Swiss Alps to realize that across the lake, a few hundred meters above the city of Orta, there is a holy place hidden in the trees. The hill itself has a name with as much gravity as the place itself: Sacro Monte. They say Nietzsche visited with a young woman in May of 1882, may or may not have kissed her, and was then heartbroken for months when she turned out to be..."not that interested." Such is the fate of great men, I suppose. The Sacro Monte possesses a blithe energy like nothing I've felt before. The freshness of the air, the calm and quiet. While it had me under its spell I was content to spend the rest of my life there.
I'll tell you more about it through a tale of a evening "adventure" I had. After having already visited these sacred places earlier the same day, I noticed a few bikes for use at the agrotourism hotel where I was put up with a friend. My soul was restless for some destinationless wandering so I chose a bike and took off. Fifteen hundred meters down the road I got a flat tire, laughed heartily, and cruised back to the hostel for a replacement. I was very close to just staying in for the evening, giving up and blaming the heat for my failure. But, the lovely receptionist, upon hearing my story of false beginnings and seeing the beads of sweat pouring down my face felt responsible in some way. She did her best to help in a hands-on way when she would likely have been most useful as moral support, but together we pumped up another bike's tires. I assured her that it was no wrong-doing on her part and that her establishment's name would not be tarnished and set off down the road with renewed energy!
The road curved aggressively, snaking its way down toward the lake, my tentative destination. At the roundabout I had no time to pause and think, and before I knew it I was headed past the road to the lake and up toward Sacro Monte again! Yes, of course! It felt so natural! The decision would lead me up a thousand meters or so of steep, curved switchbacks - a formidable hill climb for my undersized bicycle (or oversized rider?). My muscles were loose in the 34°C air and I surged up the hill in the half the expected time, breathing double as hard, and entirely alone on the road to this hidden World Heritage site. All the tourists had long drifted home, or to the lakeside for an evening meal.
The evening faded slowly; it was getting late but there was still plenty of sunlight left. The sun was hidden behind trees but the sunlight was still all around me. If there has ever been a great truth made metaphor, its that just because you can't see the sun, doesn't mean it's not there.
But alas! I was not exactly a tourist; I was, and still am for the moment, a wanderer. My restlessness, so befuddling to some friends and family, was really a desire to explore, for solitary exploration, for alone time, yes, but more so for intuitive wandering in the way that can only be done alone. "Sounds like quite the adventure," comes the refrain from city folk - yes, but for me an adventure is about traveling with others. This, instead, was wandering. Aimless, free, and untethered.
As I reached the top, a middle-aged woman waited in her car in the parking lot. Her face betrayed her desire to leave the Sacro Monte, she was waiting for someone (or something...God knows what). In that moment she existed as everything I was not and might never be. She looked upon me with some mixture of fear and distrust; surely, the sweaty beast that I was terrified or disgusted her on some level.
- Buona cera, Senhora - I said happily (too happily, she thought.)
- Cerá - she responded warily.
I blew past her and the climb was finished! Sweet victory! The blood rushing through my limbs seemed to return to my heart and head as I left my bike and walked up to the second oldest of the twenty-one 16th and 17th century chapels that characterize the Mount. Each chapel has a unique character, and painted in the mannerist style each contains a unique scene from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi. The Mount is unique in being dedicated to a saint and not just to boring old Jesus or the Madonna, and I appreciate it as a more honest place for just that reason.
To enjoy the chapels for a few hours one follows a spiral pattern, Chapel I to Chapel II, Chapel III and so on. It is a place of sacred energy for all who visit, though sacred for the child comes in the form of picnic snacks and the way his soccer ball wants to hide in the tall grass, and for older ones in the way each breath and each spoken word vibrates in the walls of each tiny chapel. I approached a retaining wall at the top of the hill and looked out over the water. Then I took a few more steps to see past the trees and brought into clear view that other sacred place out in the middle of Lago di Orta. The Isola San Giulio.
The light from the sun, visible now from atop the Mount, fell on me softly through the pine trees for a few minutes. I sat on the wall, letting my legs dangle. As my breathing slowed and things fell into focus, the earth turned slowly and moved the mountains between my eyes and the sun. I thought about all the suns of my life, all the people who were as suns to me, that have since been taken out of view by forces greater than my own. I came to make peace with that for just a moment, and then for eternity.
My back was tired from the ride and I sat up straight, allowing my lungs to take a deep breath of breaths, the light of the sun, gone but still present, made the air thick in my lungs. A young couple, only a few dozen Springs old, wandered up and silently greeted me, taking a few photos. We breathed in the lovely, hazy evening light together, yet individually as well, above all as individuals. The couple drifted away slowly and made kind gestures to acknowledge what we had shared. I wonder, as I relive this story so often, if they remember and appreciate me as I do them.
The next moment had been waiting for me for all the while, for my whole life perhaps. All the mountains, forests, ripples on the lake below, and all the tiny human structures came into divine focus, and I breathed a timeless breath - the same breath that thousands of poets and priests, farmboys and milkmaids, saints and thugs have breathed. My senses and the lakescene forgot about the game of duality and a sensation arose that I had been missing for ages! It was just that my wanderings had not been free enough to bring it about until that very moment!
As the next rippling breath vibrated in my lungs, an unexpected mystery rattled my whole being. Without warning, the ancient churchbells no more than forty feet behind me rang with praeternatural intensity. The air shook, the mountains were blurred and indefinite, the whole world was no longer fixed. I was nearly shaken from the rock wall down to the grassy knoll forty feet below! But as the vibrations dissipated slowly, the earth became solid once again, past and future fell back into place, and I breathed a calm breath of relief, the kind that only comes after such a fright.
That space was odd and it was unforgettably mine, and I desired to share it with no one and with everyone. But who could understand it as I did then? Appreciate it as I do? Even what I have of it is a memory fading.
I gathered my bike, my bag, and my thoughts and rolled slowly down the steep path, applying the brakes liberally and occasionally stopping to give their hot surfaces a moment to breathe as well. Upon reaching the roundabout again, the only plan that could have ever been kept me leaning left and continuing down the road, not home, but to the lake. It seemed so obvious that the heat and love and energy of the Mount had to be taken to the lake. I went back to a lakeside spot where I had relaxed earlier in the day. When I arrived, there was only a solitary couple in a space which held hundreds of swimmers and sunbathers, mostly youths and families. I suppose, after all, that life is mostly full of youths, and families. There is really no room for us wanderers in any one place for long. We have left youth behind and family is but a dream.
The large trees continued providing shade right along the bank as they had for decades, and the water in the ground seeped slowly toward the lake underneath the grass where I threw down my shirt and shorts. Those same forces carried me toward the water, slow steps, mindful of the various shapes of rocks mixed with sand. I looked down the curved shoreline at the last families of campers gathering their things and their small, sun-reddened children. It was a late Spring evening in the southern foothills of the Alps, eight o'clock and most families were preparing dinner or resting after a long, hot day on the lake.
I found myself to be the only person in the water. Slowing my entry at waist height I began to consider if all the other potential swimmers knew of some danger endemic to the evening at this particular lake. I determined large fish and and a rapidly cooling surface temperature to be the only present dangers, and being a strong swimmer I would bring my own heat to the water. Several male ducks paddled along, clearing a path for me to swim out into the deep, cold, ancient glacial lake. I swam fast, then slow, front crawl, sidestroke and corkscrew. The water was crisp and cold, refreshing in every way and after about one hundred meters of swimming away from shore, I turned over for my first backstroke.
As I gazed back toward land, there, up on the mountainside above a small, glowing, pale-red church rose my old friend, my lover, the sweet moon. I'll save you the background on my fascinating love affair with the moon, but suffice it to say that she is as near to a God as I have ever known. Forgetting my surroundings and the physics of buoyancy, I sank into that familiar trance into which the moon often draws me, and sank for a moment below the water. I surfaced and swam out farther and farther with childish gusto and vitality. The farther I swam the more magnificent and luminescent I found her to be.
I must have swum five hundred meters out into the lake, stillness all around me and the rising moon to the southeast, when a deep cold seemed to start to pull at my legs. I was instantly taken back to Hermann Hesse's stories where blissful bathing protagonists end their tales and lose their lives during early morning dips in serene, cold alpine lakes. I would not be that sort of protagonist, I resolved, and reluctantly swam toward the shore.
As the water got shallower around me, I slowed my pace, death no longer tugging at my toes. I found myself near a group of ducklings - the cutest of things - half of whom, unaware of my presence, continued passing by, and the other half following their mother more closely as she gazed at me with wary but confident eyes. I made movements to herd the stragglers toward their guide and made my way to the shore, but at that moment, from the bushes where the ducklings were foraging sprang a tiny garter snake! What a fright! I was startled in that primitive part of my brain dedicated to the fear of snakes and spiders and I made quick strokes to let it swim by as well. I gazed back to see if the ducks had borne witness, but they were already gone, on their way to a place to rest safely and comfortably for the evening.
My creature friends gone, I was alone in a few feet of water, gazing through the liquid crystal down at the arabesque of rocks below. I saw the sheen of a thousand stones lying happily together. They were crystalline as well, full of energy, part of the mountains just as much as they were part of the lake. I found a few that would be worthy gifts for faraway friends and stashed them in my back pocket.
I exited the water and then turned about for one last look. A thick haze was now visible as the lights of the setting sun and the rising moon comingled. The lake drew a darkness from below and I was glad to be on the sun-warmed shore. The mountains in the distance and the impossibly high peaks behind them took on a bluish color, ready for a good nights sleep. I took in the scene in a way that one can only do when he may never see something again. I smiled, breathed a full and intentional breath, and mounted my sturdy, undersized bicycle to ride home.
More photos from Orta here.
The place was a town called Orta. Cradled between the curvaceous foothills of the Italian Alps, it has a lake so blue that everyone in the city seems to carry something of it in their eyes. It is a deep, dark blue, but the bottom of the lake can easily be seen at even fifteen meters of depth. The clarity of the water is unrivaled in my life of late. The town of Orta, for it is a town more than a city, and the Lago di Orta sit in the far northwestern province of Novara. It is a tiny province full of vineyards and small farms. Novara's capital of the same name is accessible by car or by regional train from Milan. You won't be surprised to know that generally speaking the Milanese are not fond of these regional trains, and the train schedules are set in a way that requires an often lengthy transfer in Novara if one is to catch the even smaller (though more comfortable and calm) train north to the tiny Orta-Miasino station. It was, therefore, to my great delight that anyone smelling even remotely of Milan was not to be found north of Novara.
 |
| Regional train, serious conversations departing Milan. |
The true name of the town for many centuries has been Orta San Giulio. One gets the impression that all the frazioni, hamlets, that exist around Orta as one ascends the hill have been there forever. Tiny Legro with its vineyards and pigpens; Corconio to the south seemingly angry at the lake for some past injustice, and the many villages of Imola along the road to Gozzano. Each town could be nowhere else in this world - for just over any nearby hill it would be a different town altogether.
And what of the nature of the town? Does not a town draw heavily from the people it nourishes? Yes, of course, and no. Orta cares not from which century its visitors come, from which distant lands or which languages they speak; it cares only to receive them as an old mother opens her home to her lost and dispirited child. Orta is a brook filled with timeless water, and there is plenty of it for all to drink. Sure, most of the tourists are slow-moving and old. And the young tourists grow bored with the silence of the lake, its stillness and calm. They can't stand to believe that the mountains and the lake have agreed to each other's terms so wholeheartedly! And the wandering man (especially when young) will flee when he is too long near such flawless love between to beings, he will flee to find it on his own terms.
I have, until now, left out the two most iconic and powerful energies in Orta San Giulio. They have both shaped and reshaped its thousands of years of human history, captivated the hundreds of generations of humans - and more than once brought them to tears.
I'll mention first the tiny mass of rock in the middle of the lake, the Isola San Giulio. It is a small island about three hundred meters long and one hundred and fifty meters wide. Sitting there, in the middle of the lake only a thousand meters or so from the docks in Orta San Giulio, the island asks questions, begs attention, but quietly and without presumption. Who is San Giulio, you ask? He was the patron Saint of Novara, Saint Julius. It is said that Julius and his brother Julian were sent from Rome by Theodosius I to destroy pagan altars, and to build churches. They built many. His brother Julian is buried in the ninety-ninth chapel they built, in nearby Gozzano. Many small chapels have been built on the island over the centuries, and now buildings cover it entirely. Famously, the Basilica di San Giulio, the hundredth church built by the brothers, is in the center of the island today.
 |
| Isola San Giulio, Orta San Giulio, Italia |
I'll tell you more about it through a tale of a evening "adventure" I had. After having already visited these sacred places earlier the same day, I noticed a few bikes for use at the agrotourism hotel where I was put up with a friend. My soul was restless for some destinationless wandering so I chose a bike and took off. Fifteen hundred meters down the road I got a flat tire, laughed heartily, and cruised back to the hostel for a replacement. I was very close to just staying in for the evening, giving up and blaming the heat for my failure. But, the lovely receptionist, upon hearing my story of false beginnings and seeing the beads of sweat pouring down my face felt responsible in some way. She did her best to help in a hands-on way when she would likely have been most useful as moral support, but together we pumped up another bike's tires. I assured her that it was no wrong-doing on her part and that her establishment's name would not be tarnished and set off down the road with renewed energy!
The road curved aggressively, snaking its way down toward the lake, my tentative destination. At the roundabout I had no time to pause and think, and before I knew it I was headed past the road to the lake and up toward Sacro Monte again! Yes, of course! It felt so natural! The decision would lead me up a thousand meters or so of steep, curved switchbacks - a formidable hill climb for my undersized bicycle (or oversized rider?). My muscles were loose in the 34°C air and I surged up the hill in the half the expected time, breathing double as hard, and entirely alone on the road to this hidden World Heritage site. All the tourists had long drifted home, or to the lakeside for an evening meal.
The evening faded slowly; it was getting late but there was still plenty of sunlight left. The sun was hidden behind trees but the sunlight was still all around me. If there has ever been a great truth made metaphor, its that just because you can't see the sun, doesn't mean it's not there.
But alas! I was not exactly a tourist; I was, and still am for the moment, a wanderer. My restlessness, so befuddling to some friends and family, was really a desire to explore, for solitary exploration, for alone time, yes, but more so for intuitive wandering in the way that can only be done alone. "Sounds like quite the adventure," comes the refrain from city folk - yes, but for me an adventure is about traveling with others. This, instead, was wandering. Aimless, free, and untethered.
As I reached the top, a middle-aged woman waited in her car in the parking lot. Her face betrayed her desire to leave the Sacro Monte, she was waiting for someone (or something...God knows what). In that moment she existed as everything I was not and might never be. She looked upon me with some mixture of fear and distrust; surely, the sweaty beast that I was terrified or disgusted her on some level.
- Buona cera, Senhora - I said happily (too happily, she thought.)
- Cerá - she responded warily.
I blew past her and the climb was finished! Sweet victory! The blood rushing through my limbs seemed to return to my heart and head as I left my bike and walked up to the second oldest of the twenty-one 16th and 17th century chapels that characterize the Mount. Each chapel has a unique character, and painted in the mannerist style each contains a unique scene from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi. The Mount is unique in being dedicated to a saint and not just to boring old Jesus or the Madonna, and I appreciate it as a more honest place for just that reason.
To enjoy the chapels for a few hours one follows a spiral pattern, Chapel I to Chapel II, Chapel III and so on. It is a place of sacred energy for all who visit, though sacred for the child comes in the form of picnic snacks and the way his soccer ball wants to hide in the tall grass, and for older ones in the way each breath and each spoken word vibrates in the walls of each tiny chapel. I approached a retaining wall at the top of the hill and looked out over the water. Then I took a few more steps to see past the trees and brought into clear view that other sacred place out in the middle of Lago di Orta. The Isola San Giulio.
The light from the sun, visible now from atop the Mount, fell on me softly through the pine trees for a few minutes. I sat on the wall, letting my legs dangle. As my breathing slowed and things fell into focus, the earth turned slowly and moved the mountains between my eyes and the sun. I thought about all the suns of my life, all the people who were as suns to me, that have since been taken out of view by forces greater than my own. I came to make peace with that for just a moment, and then for eternity.
My back was tired from the ride and I sat up straight, allowing my lungs to take a deep breath of breaths, the light of the sun, gone but still present, made the air thick in my lungs. A young couple, only a few dozen Springs old, wandered up and silently greeted me, taking a few photos. We breathed in the lovely, hazy evening light together, yet individually as well, above all as individuals. The couple drifted away slowly and made kind gestures to acknowledge what we had shared. I wonder, as I relive this story so often, if they remember and appreciate me as I do them.
The next moment had been waiting for me for all the while, for my whole life perhaps. All the mountains, forests, ripples on the lake below, and all the tiny human structures came into divine focus, and I breathed a timeless breath - the same breath that thousands of poets and priests, farmboys and milkmaids, saints and thugs have breathed. My senses and the lakescene forgot about the game of duality and a sensation arose that I had been missing for ages! It was just that my wanderings had not been free enough to bring it about until that very moment!
As the next rippling breath vibrated in my lungs, an unexpected mystery rattled my whole being. Without warning, the ancient churchbells no more than forty feet behind me rang with praeternatural intensity. The air shook, the mountains were blurred and indefinite, the whole world was no longer fixed. I was nearly shaken from the rock wall down to the grassy knoll forty feet below! But as the vibrations dissipated slowly, the earth became solid once again, past and future fell back into place, and I breathed a calm breath of relief, the kind that only comes after such a fright.
That space was odd and it was unforgettably mine, and I desired to share it with no one and with everyone. But who could understand it as I did then? Appreciate it as I do? Even what I have of it is a memory fading.
I gathered my bike, my bag, and my thoughts and rolled slowly down the steep path, applying the brakes liberally and occasionally stopping to give their hot surfaces a moment to breathe as well. Upon reaching the roundabout again, the only plan that could have ever been kept me leaning left and continuing down the road, not home, but to the lake. It seemed so obvious that the heat and love and energy of the Mount had to be taken to the lake. I went back to a lakeside spot where I had relaxed earlier in the day. When I arrived, there was only a solitary couple in a space which held hundreds of swimmers and sunbathers, mostly youths and families. I suppose, after all, that life is mostly full of youths, and families. There is really no room for us wanderers in any one place for long. We have left youth behind and family is but a dream.
 |
| Earlier in the day on the shores of Lago di Orta, Orta San Giulio, Italia. |
I found myself to be the only person in the water. Slowing my entry at waist height I began to consider if all the other potential swimmers knew of some danger endemic to the evening at this particular lake. I determined large fish and and a rapidly cooling surface temperature to be the only present dangers, and being a strong swimmer I would bring my own heat to the water. Several male ducks paddled along, clearing a path for me to swim out into the deep, cold, ancient glacial lake. I swam fast, then slow, front crawl, sidestroke and corkscrew. The water was crisp and cold, refreshing in every way and after about one hundred meters of swimming away from shore, I turned over for my first backstroke.
As I gazed back toward land, there, up on the mountainside above a small, glowing, pale-red church rose my old friend, my lover, the sweet moon. I'll save you the background on my fascinating love affair with the moon, but suffice it to say that she is as near to a God as I have ever known. Forgetting my surroundings and the physics of buoyancy, I sank into that familiar trance into which the moon often draws me, and sank for a moment below the water. I surfaced and swam out farther and farther with childish gusto and vitality. The farther I swam the more magnificent and luminescent I found her to be.
I must have swum five hundred meters out into the lake, stillness all around me and the rising moon to the southeast, when a deep cold seemed to start to pull at my legs. I was instantly taken back to Hermann Hesse's stories where blissful bathing protagonists end their tales and lose their lives during early morning dips in serene, cold alpine lakes. I would not be that sort of protagonist, I resolved, and reluctantly swam toward the shore.
As the water got shallower around me, I slowed my pace, death no longer tugging at my toes. I found myself near a group of ducklings - the cutest of things - half of whom, unaware of my presence, continued passing by, and the other half following their mother more closely as she gazed at me with wary but confident eyes. I made movements to herd the stragglers toward their guide and made my way to the shore, but at that moment, from the bushes where the ducklings were foraging sprang a tiny garter snake! What a fright! I was startled in that primitive part of my brain dedicated to the fear of snakes and spiders and I made quick strokes to let it swim by as well. I gazed back to see if the ducks had borne witness, but they were already gone, on their way to a place to rest safely and comfortably for the evening.
My creature friends gone, I was alone in a few feet of water, gazing through the liquid crystal down at the arabesque of rocks below. I saw the sheen of a thousand stones lying happily together. They were crystalline as well, full of energy, part of the mountains just as much as they were part of the lake. I found a few that would be worthy gifts for faraway friends and stashed them in my back pocket.
I exited the water and then turned about for one last look. A thick haze was now visible as the lights of the setting sun and the rising moon comingled. The lake drew a darkness from below and I was glad to be on the sun-warmed shore. The mountains in the distance and the impossibly high peaks behind them took on a bluish color, ready for a good nights sleep. I took in the scene in a way that one can only do when he may never see something again. I smiled, breathed a full and intentional breath, and mounted my sturdy, undersized bicycle to ride home.
More photos from Orta here.
