Ben tornata!

"Ben tornata!" This is what I have been hearing several times daily for the past ten days from each of the people I encounter. "Ben tornata!" Welcome back!" It is usually accompanied by a handshake, a hug, a kiss, or all three.
Most people are still here in their same houses. One lovely young woman has married since last year and is expecting a baby in September. The kind and comic owner of the tabachi, who loved Elvis Presley and was proud to greet me in English has died. But it is still beautiful and the mountains faithfully greet you each day: bold in purple and draped in snow, or dark and ominous and sulking behind slate grey thunderheads. I literally run towards them every other day.
There is a road that undulates due west of town. It goes downhill for about 1/2 a kilometer, then rises up and down alternatively for the next 1 1/2 kilometers. I run it every other day. Or rather, I alternate bouncing pokily along downhill and then slog the uphills. But it provides a good, solid hour of cardiovascular activity and helps to quiet my chattering brain. It winds through farmland, sunflower fields, and olive groves as it meanders towards the mountains. This week I was stopped mid-run twice by the farming activity. Once by mechanized activity, once by human-powered work. Both equally fascinating.

Farm Hills of Castiglione Messer Raimondo

As I came around a curve where the hard road turns to fine, white dust, I heard the motor before I saw the tractor. There were rows of hay making neat corduroy stripes between olive trees on a hillside. The hill must be at least a 30 degree incline. The tractor was chugging straight uphill, dragging what I soon realized was a baler behind it. I surmised this, because as the tractor moved uphill the stripe in its path disappeared. I knew it had to be going into the equipment the tractor pulled behind it - to be gathered into the characteristic round bales of hay that dot the hillsides here. The tractor kept moving up and up - the hill must be at least 400 yards long. The olive trees looked like those little tufts of fake green you put around a train set at Christmas. The entire way up, the farmer never jettisoned his harvest. The weight he was pulling must have been tremendous. When he reached the top of the hill, he turned, becoming perpendicular to the hill's slope. The baler moved in perfect balance behind. Then he made a tight turn and started downward with the baler and its weight now chasing behind. The movement was sure, slow, and steady. All the while one of the large, white Abruzzese sheep dogs was leaping and running back and forth in and around the tractor's path. Yet the farmer kept going. No fear or hesitation, even with the looming weight behind that could sweep him away at any moment in one crushing move. When he got to the bottom of the hill, the farmer released the gathered hay in one neat, spiraled deep yellow bundle. Then he and the dog turned and went back up another tidy row.

Guest enjoying Abruzzo's Bounty

I continued running towards the peaks, which were now rumbling and nearly obscured in darkness. I thought it best to turn and head back to town.
Castiglione Messer Raimondo sat before me like the entrance to a magical kingdom, it's church bell tower and the huge iron cross that adorns the church roof a beacon to me. It curves gracefully in a honey-colored cluster of stone houses along a plateau that eventually leads to a main road and the Adriatic. I was traversing the shadowland between worlds as I ran - from one fantasy-like realm to another. As I rounded another curve, to my left was another cultivated field. This one planted in sunflowers. It was also being tended. A man in grey cotton pants and a flannel shirt, who looked to be about  70 years old or so, was moving slowly through the green and sepia field. It was about the size of a football field, with the seating at one end zone included. The man had a back-pack-like contraption on his shoulders, and a hose that led from it dangled from his hand. He moved slowly through the cultivated rows, spraying each plant. Moving with methodical determination from one to another. I watched for about 10 minutes. He moved about 20 feet.
I saw this man two days later. This time he was sitting in the field, his bowed legs as straight out in front of him as he could get them. By the time I rounded the curve and was losing site of him, he pulled himself up and began to chop at each row with a hand-held hoe with a rough, faded wooden handle.
This is the foundation of the food eaten here. This brave. loving tending of the land. No wonder I feel so good eating here. I'm absorbing the love that went into producing the food I consume. Tonight, I am following the advice of Donatella, the farmer and owner of the Frutavendola: I've made a salad of her "ugly" tomatoes (we call them "heirloom"; here they are simply tomatoes that have not been genetically modified over the years to be perfectly smooth, evenly red, and mealy), basil, thinly sliced red onions, and salt. I eat and am happified from the inside out. Ben tornata, indeed!