The fourth day of the tour fell on a Wednesday, and we were driven by minibus all of the 12km from Santa Fiora down the mountain to Castel del Piano, a route I’d later travel at least a thousand times over the course of my life on the mountain. Arcidosso and Castel del Piano, when I first came to live and shizz got real, were my mecca for the familiar comforts of ginger and avocado and salted butter. For some reason that sort of foreign contraband never could quite fight gravity to arrive at the Coop in Santa Fiora.

On this particular Wednesday in early June 2012, it was market day (Mercoledì = Wednesday; mercato = market) in Castel del Piano. I lashed out and bought myself a dime-a-dozen bright orange, distinctly not-made-in-Italy cotton scarf with embroidered edging. I paid 10€ (including embedded tourist tax along with necessary receipt – I’ll post further down the track about the receipt funbusters, la Guardia di Finanza, who are the scariest of all the police types in Italy). The scarf was cheaper than a bottle of SPF 50+ and my lily-white neck thanked me for it on the hot hike down into the valley toward Castello di Potentino.
Gee wizz and gosh…what a dork.

Notwithstanding all my travels and international moves, I still own that scarf.

For a long time, pressing my nose deep into it, I’d flush out that olfactory-to-brain memory trigger: the honey of summer, hike sweat, the sharp, dry notes of the Montale perfume I bought in Siena. It later developed its unique bouquet: home, stone, coffee, woodsmoke, clean smell of cat, my studio. It came with me on that writing trip and the one round Italy in June and July 2012, back to Australia and then the move over to Italy in August of that year…and finally the long journey on a Chinese cargo ship back to Australia in 2023/24 eleven years later. Though it’s never been through the wash it has retained its bouquet, and added to its bouquet library.

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Treading the valley floor between Montegiovi and Seggiano I felt more “on” than I had since I was an adolescent. I was infatuated with the new, as though I had fallen in love with all the colours of life that had been fading into the beigeness and jadedness of the every day, of writing into the void, and a marriage that, while not an unhappy one, was looming toward my dawning it had run its course for growth. I didn’t know that yet, on that first hike. Here, away from it all, every possibility was at hand, and took hold of the senses.

I’m writing this from 13 years after that day and I’m aware it’s a tightrope walk between the saccharine of nostalgia and a visceral aversion to the not-so-nice things that happened in latter years. Between it all I find the baseline of my happiness. Tempered by experience and years, and a whole new language and culture, and the at-times PTSD of Italian bureaucracy – that beigeness I mentioned earlier? I’ve come to appreciate it for the gold that is calm and rest.

Here and now I can conjure those feelings of waking into that strange new world, through the yellow scent of broom, or the milk-warm swatch of sun across the bed; art and writing and tapping the creative confluence from a trickle; through reading notes – mine, forgotten and found again, and those written by other expats…”those who know”; and through purposeful and interesting movement, such as walking to explore new trails, or swimming in the sea when it’s raining. My visceral spells for joy. The body, the senses, they all remember the deliciousness, the delight. It has become far too easy to be hooked up on the fear that stores like fat in my vulnerable parts, but the body keeps the score on all the beautiful and sensual aspects of life, too. It’s all stocked together, irritant and antidote, like dock leaves near nettle beds.

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We arrived at Castello di Potentino, hot and hungry, and eager to write in such glorious surrounds. The Castello is owned by Charlotte Horton and Alexander Greene, the step-daughter and son of writer Graham C. Greene. The woo woo of the visit wasn’t lost on me. Three months earlier, working at Highland Creative, a new manager for a company on the books arrived at the office for a consultation. I told him about my upcoming trip and he mentioned that he had a cousin who had renovated a castle and made wine in Tuscany. At that point I hadn’t even skimmed the itinerary because the names and places meant little without reference points (everywhere in Italy looked close together on the map). I happened to have the itinerary sitting by my computer and I flicked through it with the client. Wouldn’t you know it? That very castello owned by his cousin was the one we were visiting on the fourth day.

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Il Quarto Giorno: Santa Fiora – Castello di Potentino – La Casacce

First published 14 June, 2012

Woke in Santa Fiora. A hill-filled walk of 10km from Castel del Piano (via an unexpected market) to Castello di Potentino in Seggiano.
What a place. The Greene family have restored, superbly and with deep respect for its history, what had been more or less a briar-covered collection of ruins – and they had to deal with 22 Italian families to do so…
We took our lunch and wine and writing in the courtyard overlooking the valley, overlooked ourselves by two darling canines.
It was difficult to haul ourselves away from Potentino but the prospect of a ‘spare’ day free from walking and travelling between towns was very welcome.
I’ll leave it for the photographs to tell the rest.

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