I have been dreaming of Italy. As one that loves food and people and land and beauty and the way they all mix, I have romanticized this moment beyond what I think any place can live up to, my usual modus operandi given my insatiable imagination. I step off the plane, feet on the ground, wind on my face. I made it. I live for this moment of reckoning.
My first bite, a train station café breakfast, was a spinach ricotta pastry and cappuccino. They were both perfect and divine as expected and I ate with a grin on my face. Italy respects its food, it is loved and cared for, mediocrity is not tolerated, even in the train station. This might be my place.
I will spend the next 4 weeks traveling through the heel of Italy’s boot; the Salento. I am here to immerse myself in the land of ancient olive trees, more than 350,000 of them are here. Lecce lies at the southern end of the heel sandwiched between the Adriatic and Ionian Seas. Boasting the largest concentration of monumental olive trees in Italy and producing over 40% of its olive oil. A tree is considered monumental when its trunk has a circumference of 3.5 Meters (11.48 Feet) at 1.3 Meters (4.265 Feet) from the ground. Thousands of the trees in this region are thousands of years old. Most planted by the Romans in their never ending quest for gold – some planted by the Messapian people before them.
The train heads south from Bari following the coast of the Adriatic Sea, I can’t wait to get my feet into that cobalt water. Whisking along I begin to see them – row after row of huge twisted old olive trees. I am entranced by the color contrast of silver sage leaves against the blue, the tropical green of the occasional fig tree and the gigantic size of prickly pear cacti lining the rails. I have a recurring excitement well up in me as I watch the trees go by; how am I here – the place I have read and researched and created in my mind? It is real and surreal.
As we got closer to Lecce the big, silver- green canopies turn to skeletons. Entire fields of grey branches, dead after centuries of care and life and gold. I knew about the devastation the olive trees in the Salento faced when a bacterium, Xylella Fastidioso, began decimating the orchards here a few years ago. Seeing the grey ghosts in person hit me harder than I expected, I can only imagine the heartbreak of the people here. I take note to be gentle with my inquiries.
Lecce, the “Florence of the South”, is my first destination. I’ve never been to Florence, or any Italian city for that matter. Other than the dreams of grandeur I’ve created in my head I am a blank slate in Italy.
