The second week on the Grande Traversata delle Alpi.

We take a rest day in Entracque. We hike no miles, save the two hot miles I walk in from my Roman roadside camp. We nap, wash clothes, and eat salad and paninis and drink red wine in the piazza. It is such a sweet pleasure to travel with Constanza.

sweet, sleepy Entracque.

We wake up, have an amazing breakfast at the Hotel Tres Etoiles, and stop at the alimentari for a few final groceries.

I am delighted by everything going on in this store. It is a bit dark, dark wood interior and most of the light coming through the shop windows-and rows and rows of every kind of grocery are crammed haphazardly onto shelves. The kind shopkeeper comes out from the back, carrying a little girl of about two.

“My granddaughter”, she explains in Italian, smiling.

“Bon Giorno!” I say, smiling and waving.

“Posso….avere….pane?” I stutter.

She nods energetically and produces two types of bread, talking all the time in Italian.

“This one is multigrain and softer. This one is sweet, and with no fat.”

I opt for the multigrain buns.

“Y….formaggio…..um…..semi-soft?”

“Si, semi soft…” she moves to her impressive cheese counter and selects a wedge of creamy cheese.

“This one will be ok for a few days in your backpack.”

She gives me a taste. It is immediately one of the best cheeses I have ever tasted. I say “duocento cinquanta….milligramos?”

“Well this wedge is 300 milligrams, how is that?” She says in Italian, holding up the large wedge.

“No…..no…..la mitad..” I revert to Spanish, making a chopping action.

“Ah yes, half.” She wraps it in paper.

“Y……sausage?” I give up and say it in English.

“Si-“ she uncovers a pile if a variety of variously aged sausages. I opt for three small, greatly-aged sausages, which turn out to be extremely hard and extremely delicious.

She follows me out into the street with her grand daughter and Constanza saves me with her better Italian. We chat for another 10 minutes, and she tells us all about her children and grandchildren, and Cuneo which is about 25 minutes away by car. I am delighted at the way people around here are so incredibly patient with my rudimentary Italian, and how they helpfully just continue to talk to us in Italian. I can pick up the gist of most basic conversations, because of my Spanish and I think also from living in the Netherlands and learning to follow conversations heavily based on context as I was learning Dutch. Constanza has a lot more grammar than me, and most of the people we have met seem delighted to bumble along in conversations with us.

We make our way out of Entracque and up the gentle incline towards the mountains. It is a long, gradual ascent up dirt roads towards the Argentera massif. We meet two retired men who talk to us for upwards of 15 minutes, all in Italian. I really need a little bit more Italian grammar and vocabulary so that I can continue to have these kinds of interactions once Constanza gets off the trail.

We are making our way into the alpine zone when Constanza whispers urgently, “look!” and points. A large goat-like animal with absolutely massive, curling horns is surveying is with mild interest from a little cliff above us. It slowly ambles away, eating grass. We learn later that this is an ibex. They live all over these mountains.

A bored ibex.

We find a little meadow with a running stream on the side of Argentera to make camp for the night. We have hiked 13.75 miles today, gaining 5200 feet.

We wake up and slowly start to move. The light is slow to creep into our little alpine valley, but when I stick my head out of my tent fly, the Argentera massif is brilliantly lit up in the morning sun. We pack up and make our way down the trail to the dam which separates the two lakes. The road across the dam looks tiny from above, but actually it is quite wide in person. Slowly, we start to climb our way out of this massive bowl, by way of Colle del Chapous; 2200 feet of gain on a nice trail. We see several ibex, sleeping in the sun-they barely seem to care that we hike by them. We clear the pass, and we take one last look back at the Argentera-its glaciers already small, if they even are permanent snowfields at all.

descent off of Colle del Chapous and the tiny rifugio far below.

We start the long, long descent. It’s hot today. We’re high-the Colle is 8300 feet- and still the breezes barely cool us. We stop at Rifugio Morelli for a beer and chat with the kind proprietor-he explains some Italian mountain words to me and their meanings.

We descend for a few hours all the way down to Terme di Valderi, a very fancy thermal spring and spa with an absolutely huge hotel-and elect to stay in the “Posto Tappa”, the bunkhouse. The proprietor walks us up to the third floor of the bunkhouse-my calves are burning from the stairs after hiking all day. We shower, rinse out our hiking clothes in the sink, and go back downstairs to enjoy a delicious dinner-salad with Bufalo cheese, ravioli, meat and vegetables, panna cotta. Incredibly this is the standard “full board” dinner, included in the price of the bunk. We lay down early, around 10 pm. We have hiked 10.5 miles today.

I wake up at 4, and 5, and 5:30 am, for no good reason-the light starts to rise through the window in our room. I quietly pack up my bag and slip out-Constanza will take a bus to Sambuco today and meet me there in a couple of days. The proprietor has laid out a breakfast for me-toast, and a croissant, and some little slices of cake, with butter, jam, and Nutella. I eat most of it and pack the rest up for a mid morning snack. I leave the posto tappa and start to make my way up towards the first pass of the day. I walk through the Maritime National Park and enter what is called “piano del Velasco”, which apparently just means “plain”.

It is an emerald green valley with a picturesque creek running down the middle. There are hoards and hoards of walkers, all Italian, all just out for the day. It is a sunny Saturday morning. A group of five men, probably drunk, come up behind me, talking and laughing loudly. One, whom I notice is dressed in camo cargo shorts and a wifebeater, tries to startle me by coming up behind me and waving his hand in my face because I am wearing headphones as I hike. I simply say “Bon Giorno” and he walks off in front of me loudly talking in Italian about people who wear headphones on the trail. Ah well, we’ve got our share of drunk assholes in the USA.

I slowly make my way up the remainder of the first pass. All the people disappear. I crest this awesomely high pass, which is a world of brown and red granite-and descend all the way to Rifugio Malinvern. It is past three pm. I get the proprietor’s attention, a man about my age or a little younger with kind blue eyes and long brown hair.

“Scuzi…..Posso un espresso?”

“Un espresso? Si.”

A young woman wearing sunglasses lounging in the sun in a lounge chair nearby turns towards me with mild interest and gives me the universal “you’re not from around here, are you” smile. I feel insecure. What did I say wrong? Is “Posso” not how you say “I would like”? Is it weird to drink espresso so late in the day here?

The man returns with a tiny cup and saucer.

“Tu cafe?”

“Si, grazie.”

Cafe. They just call it cafe, not espresso.

I drink my tiny coffee in one shot and start hiking up the second pass. Mercifully, clouds roll in and bring the temperature way, way down. I slowly climb one grassy bench, then another, before finally making my way up the switchbacks to the pass. I crest the pass after 6 pm and pick my way down the other side through a Boulder field. I finally make camp near Colle Lombardi, next to a tiny lake, which is teaming with life-something is flip-flopping energetically at the water’s edge, and whether tadpole or fish, I remember Scott’s waterborne-illness from the life-ful

Ruby Reservoir last summer in Nevada-and I carefully filter the water I take, thinking, “I probably shouldn’t drink too much of this…”

convenient little lake near Lombardi pass makes for dew-y but comfortably cool camping.

I am pretty wiped-this was over 7000 feet of elevation gain today. I hiked 14.5 miles.

I wake up with an aching back, from sleeping on my back on my pad. All of my hip and back muscles spasm and complain as I turn over to my side. I didn’t stretch last night before going to sleep. That was a mistake.

I sit up with some difficulty and sleepily eat cereal as a few early morning motorcycles buzz by on the road over Colle de Lombardi heading into France. I pack up my things-everything is wet with dew from the tiny lake. I’ll have to dry them out later. I walk up to the Colle and am happy to find a little snack shack, open.

I order “a cafe”. I ask the worker, “é Italia…or Francia?”

“Look, look over there, that post…” he says in French-accented English, pointing to a little stone moniker with an “F” engraved on it, maybe ten feet to the right of the coffee stand. “THAT”-he points past the moniker-“is Italy. THIS is France.”

border markers. a bit less intimidating than the historic fort at Tenda Pass.

I smile, remembering how many times I have had similar conversations with French people in the Pyrenees. “Ah! Well, mercí!”

“Ah! Parlez-vouz Français?”

I laugh. “No, English, and Spanish, and little bit of Nederlands…. But French is none.”

I pay for my little coffee and hike on. My legs are tired. The large muscles ache with exercise and beg me to stop, and I feel drowsy and irritable. Yesterday was too big of a day to sleep off for a few hours in my tent on my ultralight sleeping pad with no stretching whatsoever. I will need to rest in Sambuco.

I make my along a running ridge and descend to the Santa Anna area. This area marks the place where St Ann, patron saint of women and childbirth, appeared in a vision over one hundred years ago. There is a chapel, a statue, and a few coffee shops and rifugios.

There are hundreds of people walking around on this sunny Sunday morning. Old, young, my age, babies. Entering the cafe, I realize that there is a mass going on in the chapel. I order a water and a cold egg sandwich-not very good-and slowly eat it. I fill my water bottles and step back out into the sun, and start wandering up towards the GTA, not paying too much attention to my surroundings.

I look up. Suddenly there are more and more people around me, walking all the same direction I am going. In a moment I am shoulder to shoulder with Italians filling the street, young and old. A loud speaker becomes audible-this is a procession, and a priest is saying a prayer, and all of my comrades respond to the well-memorized Catholic prayer in Italian. Walk, walk. Call and response. Incense fills the air. I feel strange, and a lump rises in my throat, that I can’t explain. I step to the side, and the priest passes, carrying the cross. I turn slowly away down the trail, and the voices fade away, and once again all I hear are the wind and the birds. I am alone on the trail again.

My eyes burn with unshed tears, and the mountains blur for a moment. It is the separation that hurts. I am not Italian. I do not speak this language. I do not know these prayers. And I do not believe in this God-if but for the uniting love force that binds humans and all living things-the presence I feel in my chest-but no, that is where it ends for me. It is an old wound; an immensely human wound, that binds me to the ground.

I slowly climb over a 1000 foot pass and make my way down to the village of Bagni di Vinadio, hoping to find an open grocery store. I am out of food, and I am hungry, and dusty, and burnt by the Mediterranean sun. No such luck-it is Sunday in rural Italy- so I step into a pizzeria and ask the young man behind the bar if I can have a pizza.

“We start serving pizza at 7,” he says in accented English. His wide-set blue eyes are in ”work mode”, his jaw firm.

“Oh….well….is there anything that I can eat now?”

“I could make you a panini, or something…” he says shruggingly.

“That would be great.”

“Where are you from?”

“Seattle.” I kind of always choose a different place to say.

He lights up. “Seattle?? Like Greys Anatomy!” His eyes open wide and I notice his freckles.

He warms to me and chats with me until my sandwich comes out of the kitchen-a huge amazing panini with hot soft white bread, melting Brie cheese, and salty prosciutto. I eat it in about five minutes, sitting upright on my bar stooI. Italians come and go around me and I have the same feeling that I felt earlier today-surrounded but not the same.

“We don’t have many Americans come through here.”

“No?”

“No, the last woman was three or four years ago, and she was from California, here with her husband.”

In disbelief I realize he is talking about Amy and James, the writers of the blog Doing Miles, which is how I learned about the GTA. I cannot believe that no other American hikers have come through here since then, or at least that stopped in and talked to this bartender. This truly is The Unseen Alps. I think of the thruhikers I know that rehike the American long trails over and over again, and although these trail communities are so special and will always be precious to me, there are trails like the GTA that are basically untouched by these people that love wilderness so much and are so strong.

The panini powers me up the hill, another 3000 feet of elevation gain, over Mount Vaccia. The sun is setting. The light fades. I am delighted to look down on tiny Bagni di Vinadio, far below. A few cow bells tinkle and drift up to where I am on the side of the mountain. I crest the ridge-here in front of me are a series of large stone ruins, dilapidated buildings with grass growing through the windows, silent here on the mountain in the dusky light. And behind this, on the other side of the valley containing Sambuco, lofty peaks soar towards the sky, filling my field of vision-gigantic, ancient, a granite wall with a million tiny crevices, and caves, and details.

I am bowled over with delight; filled with electric power as my legs find some unseen store of energy. My pace quickens and becomes fluid, my breathing even, my eyes wide, my chest proud, my soul open. I am all alone up here, surrounded by the ghosts of ancients crossing between their ruins and the peaks above. Somehow I have stumbled into this sacred place, the second sacred space I have entered today.

My knees ache from two long days as I descend the mountain. But I can’t stop. I am completely addicted to this feeling-the feeling of finding my way into silent places where only the wind blows and the sun rises and sets, over stone walls and flower fields and granite crags. My heart wants to take in more and more of this, and I am completely alive up here, in this little body.

The sun sets. Darkness grows, first in the stands of ancient larches I walk through, then all around. A firefly blinks on, then off, flying in slow little circles. I put my headlamp on and make my way to the road, where Constanza meets me, and we pass a dark field-and a hundred fireflies are dancing together in slow circles-darkness with the beauty of flashes of light-

and slowly we walk into Sambuco together, a cozy medieval village with cobblestone streets in the dark. It is 10:30 pm. I hiked 15.4 miles today, about 4500 feet gain.