Not knowing its name makes it difficult to ask for.
If it's a place, you might be right there in the midst of it, and yet not be able to tell. The Camaldoli -even if you do pronounce it properly, like a Japanese stereotype saying "camaraderie," "Ca-MAL-dol-li"- will still likely earn you blank stares. The Italians apparently do not go there. Not that you and your companions failed to arrive- You did make it to the parking lot of the hermitage, a journey of some three hours down from your Chianti hills, across the Valdarno, and up into the Apennine Mountains. For an intense half-hour you stood on the fringe of something deep and amazing and strange as a cathedral. But whistling out of that dark expanse came an ill wind. It suddenly seemed much wiser not to stay. What was it that scared you? Why, when you went into the little souvenir shop, did you not ask questions of the barrista? "Excuse me, what is there to see and do here?" You bought postcards and -as if you had finished your sightseeing- pounded down three warming espressos and backed nervously out of the steamy realm and into the snow.
Back
in the Valdarno it had been sunny, brightly normal, a modern industrial
string of towns along the river. But
it is possible to drive right through fall and into winter. The sun
gave way to clouds as the road wound up and up, more than 1000 meters
gained from the villa's doorstep.
Spits of rain hit the windshield. You became aware: no picnic today. But
it is beautiful, dramatic- vistas quickly opening and, just as quickly,
lost in mist. Rock-strewn meadows, tiny villages of somber gray stone,
slate roofs, wood shutters, woodsmoke. And just as you ascend from
rain toward snow, you cross some invisible threshold. Now
you begin to suspect it- you must be in the Camaldoli. All
of this akin to that sensation from childhood, when the family car
finally swung into the entrance of the State Park, the national forest,
the nature preserve. A
hush, an urge to cover your head, or kneel? Maybe
the feeling was first created here,
eight centuries ago, when the vast forest tracts of the Camaldoli came
under the care of Benedictine monks. Entering this forest you know
instantly you are under a new authority. This forest is holy, and its
acolytes are the hermits, the religious colony whose purpose is the
care and feeding of this forest. Across
the invisible threshold, the road seems uncomfortably temporary. It
has only been borrowed from the mountain that slopes up to the left
and drops away dramatically on the right. You find eerie beauty in
every direction: on one hand the close-up understory and on the other
the valley view.
Now the snow is beginning to accumulate. Something strange is happening to the beauty. There is a painters' trick to make colors seem more vivid: a boundary of white or black is placed between each area, which keeps the colors from dulling each other by blurring with their complements. The white snow and the wet-black hemlock trunks are working that same trick now. The beech trees are as bright as candles lighting up the dark pine tunnel. Their rusty leaves litter the roadway, phosphorescent in the gloom. The colors are liquid, nourishing as hot broth, but their warmth is too ephemeral.
You need action.
Your pack can't resist the call of the forest. Like satyrs you leap down a pine-needle carpet, a path beside a tumbling stream. The sound around you is the voice of God: high wind, loud water. But you are a little afraid of God. When you burst out on the road again, Scott turns back to fetch the car, and suddenly you become frightened. Isn't it taking him too long? No sound of the engine. But he must be coming! If he'd slid off the road you would have heard that. Suddenly an alien stand of trees threatens. Like God's gatekeepers they are eager to repel you -all unnecessary interlopers- not of their kind. The last turn in the road brings you to a little chapel. It looks like a state park guardhouse, and like one it stands at an entrance to the Camaldoli. Carved over the arched door are these words:
Santa Maria della Neve
You understand perfectly why someone felt inclined to build a chapel here, an urge unchanged by centuries.
Deliver us from evil.
There will be no Camaldoli picnic for you, no tour of the monastery's library, sanctuary, or typical hermit's cell. Just the long drive back to the twentieth century, and benign autumn already in progress in the Tuscan vineyards.
My life stories
